by Rosalind Miles (2/5)
Simply put, this book did not float my boat. Generally, I am a fan of historical fiction, especially anything relating to the Tudor era. But this book nearly took away my will to live.
To me, the joy of historical fiction is the chance to visit (or revisit) previous events and get them with an interesting look from the view of the narrator or protagonist. Despite other shortcomings, Philippa Gregory does this well, especially in The Other Boleyn Girl. Miles, however, managed to write a book that somehow moves too quickly, drags tediously, is confusing, disorienting and repetitive.
Elizabeth is not presented as an interesting character. Instead she is whiny, bitchy, and downright annoying.
I found a review on Goodreads that summed up my issue with her character perfectly:
If Elizabeth I was as portrayed in this book, she wasn’t just a queen of England, she was a drama queen. As portrayed by Miles, Elizabeth is a whiny, histrionic little brat with absolutely no strength whatsoever. She never commands her people; she “sobbed,” she “wept,” she “screeched,” she “howled,” she “screamed,” she “told them tearfully,” and “wept afresh.” As far as I can tell, she spent about 50 years alternately sobbing, screaming and screeching.
She seems to spend the majority of the book either in crisis, in horribly unfulfillable love or worrying about her age. And speaking of her age, the pacing does not flow well at all. She seems to skip years, bemoaning her age in decades.
This book is long, too. More than 600 pages of Elizabeth writing about her life. It takes the form of an autobiography, a self-narrated tale in which Elizabeth wants to set forth the circumstances of her life. But instead of just maintaining a straightforward path, there are also long stretches of italicized sections which are Elizabeth’s later thoughts on previous events. These sections, especially with their forced foreshadowing, made the book even harder to read because they kept pulling me out of the narrative flow.
I didn’t give up on this book because I thought at some point, events would get interesting. But they never did. It took me almost a month to get through this book because I dreaded picking it up.
So, while not the worst book I have ever read, I don’t feel better for completing it. I don’t want to give it a 1, just because it is historical fiction, and somehow that gives it an extra point. I’m just glad to have it out of the way so I can start on the rest of my summer reading.
