Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

“He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.”

“I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?”

"We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.”

 (I couldn't choose one quote, so you got three!)

Can you believe that after this review and one more, I am caught up?  It's true.


This is one of those books that you spend forever thinking, "Oh, I should read that.  I aught to read that.  I really should read that," but then you don't. But, now I did.  And I don't regret it at all.

Mary Boleyn spends her life doing precisely what she is told to do.  And what she is told to do is to have the ambition of a Boleyn, or at least pretend.  As a fourteen year old girl, she begins to fall in love with her role as mistress to the dazzling Henry VIII.  But disenchantment soon sets in as she realizes that she is a powerless pawn, and this is not the life she wants.  As she falls out of favor for her other, fiery sister, Anne,  Mary gets cast off by her family as a failed plan.  But as Mary moves farther and farther away from her family's satisfaction, she moves closer and closer to her own happiness. And we're left thinking, maybe the "Other Boleyn Girl" didn't get the short end of the stick.

I was pleased with this story, and the thoughts that it had.  I especially liked its deeply personal analysis of both nobles and women in the Tudor England society, and its thoughts on actual happiness.  It was, for the most part, engagingly written, and I cared deeply about several characters (Mary, George, William, etc).  There were also several characters I did not care for, such as Anne, but she's not exactly supposed to be likeable.  I did enjoy its very intricate foray into the question of sibling rivalry--the absolute war, and abject quarreling, but also the complete devotion of sisters. 

On the down side, there will be sex.  There just will be.  It keeps it to a PG-13 (I should think), but it's there.  It also was a bit slow-going.

4 stars.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Over-analyzing Disney Movies: The Little Mermaid--Why Eric is White.

Image
I have recently noticed a trend of just purely over-analyzing Disney movies.  In this category, I also include the fascination with photoshopping Disney characters to swap genders, races, or eras, as well as making princesses have "realistic" body shapes (which is something I could write a whole other post about, and it wouldn't be pretty.  Spoiler alert:  I find it to be one of the most unempowering trends of recent years).  However, I sometimes wonder at how much people are reading into Disney movies.  Today, I'm going to over-analyze their over-analysis. I recently read that the fact that Eric is a white prince is a representation of how we white-wash racial expectations for our children.  I'm not even sure what that sentence means.  It seems to have a lot of buzz words.  But I'm going to show you today, using evidence from the film, why Prince Eric is, in fact, the correct color. (I will, however, say that Eric is the only Disney prince wh...
Read more

Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!

James Joyce is my kind of guy. He made puzzles that I like to think are just for me. He was a great lover of languages, and he is sometimes called the father of a literary technique called polyglotism. This is when you insert other languages in there. Just 'cuz. So, in James Joyce's wonderful story, "Eveline" there is a phrase that nobody knows what it is. Even to this day. "Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!" Many people believe it to be corrupted Irish Gaelic. Needing a break from homework, I have approached this by taking the words and then transliterating them into Irish Gaelic, trying to create Irish Gaelic that would be spoken by someone of this status in this time in Ireland. Nationalist, but not educated enough to actually understand all the ins and outs of the language. I came up with two possible phrases that I find very probable. And I'm not pretending to solve the mystery. If Joyce experts over the years have not discovered the mean...
Read more

What does it mean to be a Russell?

Image
As many know, most European families (not all, but most) have a coat of arms, a crest, a motto, all that good stuff. So, I decided to look a bit into what being a Russell means. And maybe I'll do the same for Hatches, because I am a Hatch too. The last name Russell is Scottish and means "Red-headed" and derives from the Norman name of Roussel. The Russells are a well-respected Highland Scot clan, complete with Scottish crest and tartan: The motto on the crest "virtus sine macula" means "Virtue without blemish." As Scotland incorporated more and more into England, the Russells became nobility in that world as well, and were thus presented with a coat of arms: And yes, the motto written on that one is "che sara sara." You've got to admit, that's pretty gosh-darn cool. It really does mean "Whatever will be, will be." And in honor of that:
Read more