The Beginnings of Rome

I came across author Ursula K. LeGuin years ago when I found A Wizard of Earthsea.  The miniseries, that is, not the book.  I did a little research when I found out it was based on a book, but I never stopped to read it.  I think it's been on my to be read shelf for fifteen years.  I'm gonna have to read that eventually.  Either way, when I saw Lavinia, I recognized Le Guin's name, but thought she had only written science fiction.

I was wrong, and Lavinia is absolutely amazing.

Today you might hear the Lavinia and think of Matthew's ill-fated romance in season 2 of Downton Abbey with Lavinia Swire.  The name is much, much older than the early 20th century.  It is the female version of Latinus.  Mythology's Lavinia is the only living child of Latinus, King of the Latins, and his wife Amata.  She is the last wife of Aeneas, and considered to be the Mother of the Roman people.  Her story is begun in the poet Virgil's Aeneid, but it's left unfinished.  Lavinia, for all the powerful figure that she is, never speaks.  LeGuin gives Lavinia a voice, and her story is beautiful.

We meet Lavinia first as a young girl.  She connects more with her father, King Latinus, than her mother, Queen Amata, but Amata's tragedy was to lose two sons as children.  She's unstable to say the least, and Lavina flat out calls her mad.  Either way, she's about to make some bad choices that steer to course of her whole family.  Lavinia, as her father's daughter, helps with the religious ceremonies that surround their everyday life.  He takes her a place of pilgrimage and oracles called Albunea, where Latinus has heard the prophecies of Father Tiber and the other gods before.  Something in that place calls to Lavinia and she visits many times over the course of the book.  It's here that she meets "the poet", a shade of a dying Virgil (right) who laments that he did not truly tell Lavinia's story.  Through him Lavinia learns of her fate to marry Aeneas, who left Troy in the aftermath of the war and is destined to start a great civilization.

Eventually, Lavinia is of a marriageable age and suitors begin coming to court her and her parents.  The most persistent of these is her cousin Turnus.  Turnus is king of the Rutili, but something in him sets Lavinia on edge.  Turnus and Lavinia's other suitors propose a Helen of Sparta-esque treaty in order to have Latinus select one of them to be Lavinia's husband, but she convinces her father to take a trip to Albunea with her before deciding on her husband.  While there, Latinus has a dream that he takes as prophecy--Lavinia is to have no Latin husband.  He sticks truthfully to this prophecy, and a few months later Aeneas and his Trojans land on the beaches of Lavinia's home.  Latinus offers Aeneas Lavinia as a bride, and peace is struck.

Except for Turnus, who, at the prompting of his aunt, Amata, declares war on Aeneas.  It is a brutal, vicious fight with peace declared twice and broken twice thanks to Turnus.  At one point, during a ritutal, flames appear on Lavinia's head, which is seen as a good omen.  Aeneas offers to end the war by fighting  Turnus one on one, but Turnus keeps disappearing.  They eventually meet, and Turnus is defeated.  This is where Virgil's account ends.

Lavinia and Aeneas are wed, and the next bit of the book tells of their lives together.  Although their are a few difficulties, mostly from Aeneas' Trojan son Ascanius, they have a nearly idyllic three years together, as the poet predicted to Lavinia.  He is taken from her three years to the day after their wedding.  Ascanius becomes co-King of the Latins with Latinus, and chooses not to rule from the city of Lavinium, which Aeneas built and named for his wife.  Lavina tries to help Ascanius, but he is a different man from his father.  She instead devotes her time to her son, Silvius, who will become the ruling king of the Latins, even going so far as to retreat with him into "exile" in the woods.  She shows that she is not afraid of the wood by saying that she will call the wolf "brother" if he comes after her, and her people call her "Wolf Mother".  This reads as an allusion to the myth of Romulus and Remus, her descendant through Silvius, who would be raised by a She-wolf and found the mighty city of Rome.

This book is not broken into chapters in a way that a reader might expect, but is told as stream of consciousness.  This was odd when I was reading it, but a clever play.  I didn't want to put the book down, and not having traditional chapter breaks made it easier to tell myself one more page!  I just finished the book, and I'm already looking forward to rereading it.  I feel like this is one of those books where you find more and more layers the more  you read.  It not only tells Lavinia's story, but blends in beautiful historical aspects to teach the reader about daily life, warfare, and religion in a time over a thousand years before Christ and the incredible might of the Roman Empire.   

#lavinia #aeneas #virgil #aeneid #latinus #turnus #ascanius #silvius #rome #latins #amata #thepoet #epic #ursulakleguin #heroes #albunea #history #herstory #silentinthepoem #inhervoice #unfinished #readabook #queenvicsbookshelf 

When Women Step Up

I love when books aren't quite what I expect of them.  Ellin Carsta's The Draper's Daughter proved to be exactly that!  From the description, I expected the book to be equally about the two characters mentioned, Stephen and Elisabeth Hardenstein, the twin children of a Cologne, Germany, draper, or cloth merchant.  However, it isn't.

Stephen Hardenstein returns home at the beginning of the book, having been kicked out of his apprenticeship in another city, reportedly for theft.  While this introduces us to Stephen's dissolute ways, which continue to be an issue throughout the book, the story is actually about Elisabeth, and how she comes into her own.

While Stephen has been away, Elisabeth has been learning at her father's right hand, and shows herself to be a capable business woman, with quite a bit of natural talent.  However, this is 1350's Germany--women are second to their husbands, fathers and brothers.  Therefore, when her father has a stroke and is incapacitated, Elisabeth must step back and allow Stephen, who suddenly has an interest in the business, step forward.  However, Stephen is a terrible businessman, so it's lucky that Elisabeth has a few plans of her own.

The best part of this book is seeing the changes in Elisabeth.  While she pushes against her brother inheriting in the beginning of the book, she then meets Esther.  Esther is a Jewish woman who had left the city before the Jews of Cologne were slaughtered in a pogrom (massacre) in 1349.  Esther has her own business, despite being married, and is financially independent, with her husband's non-financial support.  It is Esther who first starts to convince Elisabeth that she can make her own business, and she does by using some of the cloth she's received to sew dresses for the wealthy women of town, which everyone seems to want.  During this time, Elisabeth's father recovers, and supports Elisabeth's claims, before suffering and dying from another stroke.

Which is when Stephen shows what a snake he really is.  He takes over the business, including the work Elisabeth is in the middle of.  Rather than being upset, however, clever Elisabeth uses her brother's nature against him, as well as develops a couple new plans of  her own.  In the end, she comes out on top.  She even gets the guy she likes, although that was a bit of a let down for me.  I rather liked it when that was taken and she was looking at other opportunities.

This book was a really interesting look into the 1300's in Germany, and especially into the middle class.  The Cologne picture I've posted to the left is the modern day city, but the Cathedral that you see to the right would have dominated medieval landscape even more than it does this image.  It was really interesting to me to compare it to World Without End by Ken Follet, because one of the main characters there is a wool merchant's daughter during the same general time frame in England.  They're similar fields.  What I found particularly interesting was that there while women were supposed to be under their male relations, it was relatively easy for them to work in their own right as long as they were recognized by their respective guilds.  History has done women a disservice, taking away our independence and making us fight to have it back.

#thedrapersdaughter #ellincarsta #cloth #merchants #feminism #germany #colognegermany #1300s #businesswomen #jewish #marketplace #seamstress #fashion #twins #uselessbrothers #readabook #queenvicsbookshelf

The Book That Started it All

I can't imagine that it's often that someone can point to one moment or one item that started a life long love of something.  In my case, I can.  I know the book that started my love of Tudor history.  My Gran pulled it off her shelf one day when I was eight or nine and said "here, read this."  At this point, I generally listened when I was handed a book, although I didn't always know if I would like them.  For instance, the book my Gran handed me that day, The Daughter of Time, is one that I love, but she tried to get me to read another one by the same author, Josephine Tey, but I couldn't get into that one at all.

The Daughter of Time centers around a detective, Alan Grant, who has been injured and is bed bound.  He's brought a collection of portraits and paintings and such, and he comes across the face of Richard III, and learns of the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of history.  In 1483, the twelve year old King Edward V and his younger brother, the 9 year old Duke of York, Richard, were placed in the Tower of London by their uncle and Lord Protector, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.  Not long after they were taken to the Tower, Richard deposed Edward and took the throne.  The boys were seen at the Tower at the beginning of the summer but were then seen less and less until they completely disappeared by mid to late summer.  The last reported sighting of the boys was in July of that year.  Many claimed that the boys had been killed by their uncle.

No one truly knows what happened to the Princes, although in different places in the Tower the remains of children have been found.  The 1625 renovations of the Tower discovered the skeletons of two children under a stairwell in the White Tower, and Charles II, the king at the time, believed them to be the bones of the Princes.  They were interred in Westminster Abbey, and only once since in 1933 were the skeletons examined and they were found to be the right ages for the Princes, but no testing has been done or authorized since to confirm their identities.

Perhaps thanks to William Shakespeare's play Richard III, history has long believed that Richard is responsible for the death of the two young boys, but Tey's detective, Grant puzzles out an interesting theory.  Richard had very little to gain from killing his nephews.  He suggests another candidate.  The logical argument he presents, without giving away his chosen suspect, is what got me interested in history, and the Tudors specifically.  The way in which different events and different pieces of evidence can be interpreted is absolutely fascinating.  I try to think outside the box when presente4ed with historical questions, and it is thanks to my Gran and Josephine Tey.

#historian #timefortudors #historicalfiction #josephinetey #daughteroftime #elizabethofyork #thestartofadynasty #whatgotmestarted #mystery #whodidit #theprincesinthetower #richardiii 

A Boleyn King

I generally love when authors create what I call "imagined history"--when they take real life events and people and tweak their lives.  For Tudor fiction, this "what if" history generally centers on whether or not Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen, or if she marries or not.  For author Laura Anderson, this "what if" moment is actually "what if Anne Boleyn hadn't miscarried a son in the spring of 1536?"

In The Boleyn King, the first in Anderson's trilogy, that son is seventeen year old William.  He's been king since his father died in 1547, when he was only ten, with his uncle, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, as his Lord Protector.  Queen Anne is also still alive at the beginning of the novel.  (She does die from a fall later on).  Princess Elizabeth is one of Will's advisers, as are two fictional characters, Dominic Courtenay and Genevieve "Minuette" Wyatt.  Will is ready to take the reins of kingship from his uncle and his regency council, but he must first turn eighteen.  As he begins his independence, there comes to light a conspiracy surrounding his birth.  There are several sects of Catholics who would dethrone Anne Boleyn's children.  The death of one of Anne's ladies, Alyce de Clare, brings to light the existence of a document called the "Penitents Confession," supposedly written and signed by someone who would know that Will is not Henry's son'.

Will, Elizabeth, Dominic and Minuette all ban together to try and discover where this document is, and to prevent the Catholics of the country using it as the flash paper for a rebellion that would place Lady Mary on the throne of England.  The end of the book has them successfully find the confession, but the epilogue is what is leading me to the next book!  (As soon as payday comes around at least).  The final part of Anderson's history is "what if Elizabeth still became Queen?"  I'm very excited to see how this plays out in this trilogy!

I've had this book for a few years, but I hadn't read it until now.  I tried, but I had a hard time getting into it.  I had that same problem this time, but once I got about a third of the way through I couldn't put it down.  I can only guess why I had such a problem getting into this book and the only thing that I can think of is that, as a Tudor historian, I had a difficult time with the suspension of disbelief needed when reading this kind of novel.  I've read other histories like this when I don't know the time period as well with no issues.

Regardless of my own issues, I really liked the book!  It changed point of view around the four main characters, and the men and their adventures were just as fully realized as the women, which isn't always the case with books written by women.  My only concern is that Elizabeth was not, perhaps, as fiery and opinionated as I would have liked.  William takes the temperament that I would have expected from Elizabeth, as his father's son.  I can't wait to read the rest of this trilogy and see what kind of person Elizabeth becomes.

#tudorhistory #timefortudors #henryviii #anneboleyn #whatif #imaginedhistory #william #princeofwales #henryix #elizabethi #conspiracy #traitors #reformation #rochford #theboleynking #marytudor #penitentsconfession 

The Wedding of the Century

In case anyone hasn't noticed yet, I love a good historical fiction novel.  When it a historical fiction novel about the British monarchy, I start to drool.  Which is why I was so flipping excited to discover Jennifer Robson's The Gown... About four months before it came out.  And then I had to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  While entering every early release contest I could find for the book (I didn't win any). And on top of that, the day the book came out, I was driving home from vacation and couldn't read!  It was a rough day, knowing that the book was sitting and waiting for me on my kindle and not being able to read it.  (Also, the cover is an amazing image from the wedding.)

But then I got home.  And I opened my kindle to page one, and I was lost.  If there's anything I love more than a good historical fiction novel, it's a novel where I'm so transported into the world and the characters' lives that it feels real, and Robson really managed to do that with The Gown.  And on that note, I think I'll actually tell you about the book that I loved so much.

The Gown has three point of view characters, Miriam, Ann, and Heather.  Heather's storyline takes place in 2016, the year that the Queen's wedding dress was on display at Buckingham Palace.  Her Nan has died unexpectedly, and among her things is a box labeled for Heather.  In that box are several beautiful pieces of embroidery, something that Heather didn't even know her Non knew hot to do.  After losing her job, Heather starts to look into the embroidery pieces and discovers that they are extremely similar to the embroidery on Queen Elizabeth II's wedding dress from November 1947, designed by Norman Hartnell.  Heather's journey then takes her to England on a search for more information about her grandmother.

Ann is in her early twenties in the story, and has worked at Hartnell's as an embroiderer for eight years, since she was fourteen.  She's risen up the ranks and gotten to the point where she is entrusted with the embroidery for gowns of increasing magnitude, such as for the Queen and Princesses on their 1947 tour of South Africa.  At the beginning of the book, she is living with her sister-in-law, Milly, but Milly emigrates to Canada, leaving Ann alone.  She befriends the French Miriam, who has left France after the war, and the two become roommates.  Their skill with a needle is undeniable, and so, after Princess Elizabeth and Phillip Mountbatten announce their engagement and Hartnell earns the commission, it is no surprise that Ann and Miriam are asked to create samples of the embroidery, then do the main embroidery on the Princess's wedding gown.  During this time, Miriam is struggling with not only being a survivor of Ravensbruck concentration camp, but hiding her Jewish heritage when her whole family is captured.  Ann and Miriam both meet young men, but one has a heart of gold, and one is only after the money he could earn if he got the scoop on the Princess's wedding gown.

And that's where I'll leave it so that I don't tell too much of the story.  Seriously, though, I absolutely adored this book.  You can feel the characters' heartbreaks and joys, and their worlds are multilayerd and textured.  I learned a lot about post-war England from a perspective that I don't normally look at.  There's also a lot of talk about what it means to be an artist.  Miriam is an incredible artist in the book, but she works through embroidery and collage.  A different medium, as Ann tells her once, does not make her less of an artist.  It definitely made me rethink how I approach some of my own knit and crochet project.  This book also, not going to lie, makes me want to learn how to embroider.  Luckily, the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace offers online classes!

This is the first of Ms. Robson's books that I've read, but I'm definitely looking forward to reading more!  This is one book I'll be buying a physical copy of as well. 

#thegown #elizabethii #normanhartnell #embroidery #royalschoolofneedlework #phillipmountbatten #postwar #worldwarii #art #whatisart #readabook #queenvicsbookshelf #thetiarabroke #weddings #weddingdress 

Welcome to Shadow's Landing

One of my all-time favorite authors is Kathleen Brooks.  You all know her by now, I'm sure.  Keeneston is one of my favorite places to visit and to write about.  In January last year, Kathleen published Forever Devoted, which introduced us to an extended branch of the Davies clan.  The Faulkners of Shadow's Landing, South Carolina, are related to Marcy Davies--they're all descended from Marcy's brothers and been separated from the family through a rift deepened by the biggest Mother Faulkner of them all, Marcy's mother.  Kathleen told us we were getting a spin off series to center around the Faulkner cousins, and in October of last year (I'm a little behind the eight ball) we got that introduction.

Gavin Faulkner is a doctor who was introduced in Forever Devoted, as a friend of Layne's future husband, Walker Greene.  When Gavin and Walker turn to Layne for help, the dark sordid past comes out and bridges start to be built between the Faulkners and the Davies.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the two families are oddly similar, with the same strong characters and dedication.  Tinsley, one of the cousins, is perhaps the dreamiest of the entire extended clan as an artist.  Gavin is the first Faulkner to get  his happily ever after.

Saving Shadows opens on a dark and stormy night... in the middle of a hurricane.  Gavin goes out to secure his boat more firmly to his dock and finds that there is a woman clinging to the end.  He takes her in, and it's clear to his doctor sensibilities that the woman is hurt, and not from an accident.  When she wakes up, she can't remember who she is.  Gavin turns to his Davies cousins and their facial recognition software to figure out her identity, although he lets her try to remember her life as organically as possible.

She is Ellery St. John and the last thing that she remembers before waking up to Gavin giving her CPR is something swinging at her head.  As with most of Kathleen's books, someone is out to get her!  But that head wound has given Ellery retrograde amnesia, and Dr. Faulkner is adamant about not planting false memories.  As the story moves on you meet some of the memorable characters of Shadow's Landing, which include Bubba the Gator and Gator, who catches him.  Granger Fox is the sheriff, and Cord is his deputy--and his Grandmama had a very good brownie recipe apparently.  The Rose Sisters of Keeneston find their matches in Miss Winnie and Miss Ruby.  There's a prayer group who throws prayer books like ninja throwing stars!  Ellery doesn't have all the time she needs to remember organically, because she is the only suspect in a murder investigation.

Here's the big question, though?  Will Ellery remember before she becomes another ghost to haunt Shadow's Landing?

And seriously, who keeps cutlasses in candlesticks?

#shadowslanding #savingshadows #pirates #stjohnsrevenge #cutlassesinthecadlesticks #pieorcake #faulkners #gavinfaulkner #ellerystjohn #art #charleston #artgallery #kathleenbrooks #frombluegrasstobayou #readabook #queenvicsbookshelf #anewseries

A Brush With Death

It might seem strange that I'm starting off a new year with a book that could have so easily been a tragedy, but Marius Gabriel's The Ocean Liner is a book of new beginnings.  It's a beautiful story of a mix of fictional and historical figures to create a narrative that is beautiful and makes you really think about who you are and what your identity is.

With the SS Manhattan docked in Le Havre, France, in 1939, we begin our introductions to her cast of characters.  At the helm is Captain "Rescue" Randall, a real figure who managed to save a many lives over the course of his career.  While the story of the Manhattan in this book belongs to her sister ship and Captain,  SS Washington, Randall's cool thinking in the climax of the novel is critical to survival.  Already on board the Manhattan are cousins Rachel and Masha Morgenstern.  These two girls are in their early twenties and Jews escaping Germany.  Famous composer Igor Stravinsky boards with his companion Katherine Wolff.  Leaving behind the graves of his mother, wife, daughter and lover, he feels as if it were better that he die and join those he loves.  Arturo Toscanini, the conductor who redefined music, waits impatiently for his wife, Carla, ready to disembark if she does not arrive in time.  When she does, she tells him they will be separated as Toscanini has had many affairs with much younger women.  Also in Le Havre, Stravinsky is joined by Thomas Konig, a German member of the Hitler youth with a secret that could mean his death.  As these characters are waiting impatiently in Le Havre for the ship to leave, in Southampton, England, Mrs. Rose Kennedy is struggling to control her oldest daughter, the ill-fated Rosemary.  Rosemary has fallen in love with Cubby Hubbard, a musician, and he with her, but the Kennedy's know what Rosemary's life looks like as she struggles with learning disabilities, seizures, fits, and is unable to control herself.  Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy separate them.  Also in Southampton is Fanny Ward, an aging actress who has recently lost her daughter and is struggling to maintain her public image. 

Eventually the Manhattan leaves Le Havre, picks up her passengers from Southampton, and begins her journey across the Atlantic.  She doesn't realize that there is danger lurking in the ocean in the form of U-113, a German U-boat.  Second in command of the submarine is Rudi Hufnagel, who has an interesting connection to one of the Le Havre passengers.  As the Manhattan sets out to sea, she comes into the sights of U-113, despite being an American passenger ship.

It feels as if it takes a long time to get the the climax of this book, the confrontation between the Manhattan and U-113, but every minute of that book has you falling in love with her characters just a bit more.  From Rachel, disowned by her family for a romantic relationship, to Toscanini, struggling with loving his wife and being in love with nubile young women, even to Rudi, struggling with his Captain's hardcore belief in the Nazi ideals when he does not believe as firmly.  It makes for a lot of tension when everyone comes together.  Only one side is going to come out of this confrontation intact.

While I loved the character development and how this confrontation between ships makes each character reevaluate their lives, the end felt a bit fragmented and incomplete.  I wish the story had stopped when the survivors of the confrontation arrived in New York.  While it was nice to see how each of them went on to live their respective lives, it was small flashes when I wanted the whole story. 

The character I found myself most interested in during the story was Rosemary Kennedy (pictured to the left, from her debut in London, 1938).  I did not know a lot about her going into the book.  I knew she was JFK's sister, and that she'd had a lobotomy, but I hadn't spent any time really looking into the story.  When I did, after reading some of it in this book, I was heartbroken for the beautiful young woman that she had been.  In  today's world, there are probably a million things that could have helped her, but Rosemary was a victim of her time and her parent's ambition.  When she wasn't controllable, when she was a threat to the ambition of the Kennedy men, she was shut away and dealt with.  Rosemary is definitely someone that I want to learn more about, and will.

I would definitely recommend The Ocean Liner to anyone who likes historical fiction, or fiction in general.  There's not a great romance, and there's enough technical and war elements that I can see the book appealing to a great number of readers, male and female alike, of all ages.  The diverse cast of characters also presents the possibility of another reader connecting more with a different character.  For instance, an older reader like my grandmother may have identified more with Toscanini, Stravinsky, or even Fanny Ward, who are struggling with, to put it bluntly, being old.  (Well, maybe my Grandmother wouldn't have.  She had fire in her soul to the very end.)  Someone struggling with their religious or even sexual identity may like Thomas, Rachel, or even Masha better. 

Get out there and read a book!  Start your new year off with a bang!  Or some torpedoes.

#readabook #theoceanliner #mariusgabriel #toscanini #stravinsky #rosemarykennedy #thekennedys #ssmanhattan #worldwarii #germany #nazi #jews #hope #abetterfuture #americandream #ellisisland #queenvicsbookshelf #january2019