4/10
So, this book was like, insanely popular when it first came out, right? Or was it hype for the movie? Did I imagine it? It seems like everyone and their mother was raving about this book back in … 2004ish. I’m just now getting around to reading it, and it did not live up to its hype.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, and especially not when it’s light on the history and veeeeeeery heavy on the fiction. This novel is by no means a biography of Mary Boleyn, or her sister, Anne. It’s entirely a creation of the author, even if characters are named after historical figures. But Gregory’s flippancy with real life had been complained about before, so I’ll leave it at that.
Most of my complaints stem from the fact that the writing is just “ok,” and at over 600 pages I needed something a little better than ok to keep me going. The characters a fairly one-dimensional, and the imagery is lacking (the descriptions of clothing was particularly lackluster, which was confusing since Gregory made such a big deal about what each character was wearing showing their political alliance, yet it’s impossible to picture any of the clothing beyond color and maybe a comment about how much cleavage was on display).
Worse still, Gregory seems to hate Anne Boleyn, but since she’s one half of the story (perhaps even most of the story, even if she isn’t the narrator) this disdain and contempt is baffling. Pair that with the bad writing and historical inaccuracy, and the whole book is basically Gregory telling you how much of a bitch Anne is – but she’s just telling you that, not setting up why you, the reader, should also think that or making any sort of compelling argument about why historically she also sucked. George Boleyn is much better written – he actually comes off as charming, and witty, and disarming, all the things Anne’s described as being but never actually displays, and yet the book isn’t about the other Boleyn siblings – it’s about Anne and Mary and the fact that apparently they bickered and were petty and stole each other’s clothes and children (and it was all Anne’s fault and Mary was perfect and innocent if Gregory is to be believed).
The plot was also kind of boring. The fact that the story was book-ended by executions makes the most interesting parts the first five and the last thirty pages, and I’d just like to restate that my copy was 600 pages long. I cannot stress this enough: 600+ pages that simply plodded along, without much happening. There is some court/political intrigue, but the ending is given away before the book even begins to anyone who’s heard of Henry VIII, so even the small amount of political maneuvering doesn’t keep the story interesting enough to make up for the page count. I think the sex scenes were supposed to keep it interesting, but …. uh, they didn’t. Instead, these scenes seemed to be written solely to be ~scandalous~, as they certainly didn’t add to the story.
In the end, my interest in the Tudors is the only thing that sustained me through all 600 pages. In that, Gregory has been successful, because she somehow got millions of people to read her series, and I’d like to hope that at least a few of those people were interested enough to read some historical non-fiction and learn something about a fascinating time period in England’s history. So, there’s that at least.
But truly, the only thing worse than the book itself is the movie!
The movie, starring Natalie Portman as Anne and Scarlett Johansson as Mary, absolutely butchered Gregory’s work. There isn’t a subtle thing in the whole thing. I cannot express with words how bad the movie is – the costumes make no sense, the settings are confusing, historical inaccuracy is heightened to the level of farce, Anne’s “cleverness” is so totally laughable that, um, I laughed… the list goes on. I guess the acting was pretty good, but what they were given to work with is so bad that even that’s questionable. A lot of people really liked this movie, but I have to assume they didn’t read the book, because the two or so different that I have to assume the writers also did not read the book. At least Eric Bana made a really great Henry Tudor?
There’s another adaption, done in 2003 by the BBC, but I haven’t personally seen it. The trailer does make it seem like it stays true to the novel, for what that’s worth.
Cheese Can Read? 