Customer Rating: 
Summary: amazing author!!
Comment: I was given The Other Boleyn Girl as a gift and devoured it. Since then I have read every other book in the Tudor series. I am patiently awaiting her new book which is to hit the shelves in September. She is one of those authors who makes you not want the book to end. And her talent is consistent in every book. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants history to come alive not just remain a lot of names and dates.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Virgin's Lover
Comment: I just discovered this author and love her work. So far I've purchased and read five of her books. Have thoroughly enjoyed all of them.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wrong Turn
Comment: Virgin's Lover / 0-7432-6926-8
I really cannot understand why Gregory books seem to be so hit-or-miss. The Constant Princess was wonderful - great history, great story. The Other Boleyn Girl was, well, it was poor history but a decent story, and that's really all that matters. The Virgin's Lover isn't even a good story, and I really cannot understand why.
The story ostensibly centers around Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley's wife. Amy is distressed that her husband, upon Elizabeth's recent rise to the throne, now has a place at the palace in the new queen's court. This upsets her because, in typical Gregory fashion, the political marriage between Amy and Robert is really a romantic marriage between two lovers. However, we have to take Gregory's word on this matter - the two 'lovers' are invariably nasty and cruel to each other, with Robert being unforgivably distant (he does not even send a message when he is absent over Christmas) and Amy being petty, childish, and nagging (telling him that a dream of his father's death is an omen to stay out of battle - as though Robert has a choice in the matter - and greeting him smugly after the battle when his brother has just died). Amy also invariably prays for the death of Queen Elizabeth when it would be far more realistic for her to pray for the death of her callous husband - and we are told that Robert abandoned Amy long before Elizabeth came to the throne, so this animosity towards Elizabeth is deeply confusing, at best. With these strokes, Gregory has managed to give us two characters who are totally unsympathetic, with the end result that we do not particularly care about Amy's abandonment (we would abandon her, too) nor do we care about Robert's infidelity (we would know better than to love someone so worthless).
With the "main" characters thus rendered meaningless, all we have left is Elizabeth. This is where the novel's flaws show most badly - Elizabeth has been reduced to a silly, vacillating, pleasure-seeking, childish girl who is barely capable of making the slightest decision. She throws a very un-regal temper tantrum during her first royal mass, and leaves the pieces for the shrewd Dudley and Cecil to pick up for her. In fact, she manages to leave ALL the affairs of state to the two men, since the affairs of state are dreadfully dull and she is just a winsome 25 year old girl without a serious thought in her silly head. Until the next page, when we are told solemnly by Gregory that Elizabeth's long years of imprisonment and uncertainty seasoned and aged her and made her fit to rule. And yet, we turn the page, and there is stupid, childish Elizabeth again, because the plot demands that she be so. Honestly, if I didn't know the author better, I would assume that the writer had serious issues against women, that's how badly Elizabeth is portrayed here, and the characterization of her as a stupid promiscuous idiot flies in the face of all historical fact about the woman.
Which brings us to another major flaw in Gregory's writing here - 99 times out of a hundred in this book, she TELLS rather than SHOWS. A good author shows a characters emotions, reactions, conversations, and so on and the reader can intuit from these glimpses that the character is immature or childish or wise or altruistic or any number of character traits. Instead, Gregory just goes the lazy route and tells us "Elizabeth is this," or "Elizabeth is that," and thus is all subtlety lost completely. Paragraphs are written in this sort of style: "Dudley handled all the coronation details, because Elizabeth did not care how the coronation was planned, only that everything be perfect. Elizabeth never cared about the how or why - she was a player on a stage and she only demanded that the other actors play their parts perfectly." Well, that's certainly VERY compelling writing, except that it isn't. Good literature is not written this way. The same point could have come across much more memorably if Gregory had fabricated a conversation where Dudley tried to involve Elizabeth in the ceremonies and she reacted coolly with disinterest. This would have given us some insight into Elizabeth without having to simply memorize what Gregory tells us.
I really cannot recommend this book. Obviously, it has struck a tone with some readers and perhaps you will enjoy it, but I would recommend looking for it at the library before buying a copy. I felt that the history was bad, the writing was dull, the characters were irritating and uninteresting, and the story was lacking any kind of drama or interest.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Major dissapointment
Comment: What a disappointment this book was. The author portrays Elizabeth as a mindless pawn in the hands of the traiterous Robert Dudley. Anyone who has done much reading about Queen Elizabeth I knows that she was a brilliant linguist and astute politician and was extrememly wise in her choice of advisors. No one put words or ideas in her head that were not her own. To portray her as an emptly headed, mindless individual with no thought beyond what Robert Dudley wanted does a great disservice to one of the most successful and brilliant historical figures ever. She was way ahead of her times in her thoughts on politics and religion. I would not have finished the book except I was hoping to see some redemption somewhere in the final pages. Shame on you Phillipa Gregory for your unfounded and false portrayal of Elizabeth.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inexcusable trash
Comment: I would be ashamed to put my name to this rubbish. That Philippa Gregory put her name on this is an embarrassment.
When reading reviews of products or books, I tend to take into most consideration those "middle-area" reviews, since they seem likely to be the most accurate. If only I had seriously read the 1-star reviews of this book. Nothing infuriated me more than to read a female novelist who wrote the Constant Princess (one of my more favorite historical novels - which gave a new, intelligent perspective to Catherine of Aragon) writing a novel about two women who are the most idiotic, insufferable and utterly unrelatable women I have ever heard tell of. The characters are first of all, not even remotely plausible - historically or in fiction.
Amy Robsart is portrayed as a wet blanket of a woman who cannot stand up for herself much less get over the fact that her marriage is ending. She is forever waiting for Robert Dudley, shown here as a miserable louse of a man, to return and live happily ever after with her. Cecil's character is tiresome, simply because he is rendered impotent by Dudley's and Elizabeth's characters, and instead of retaining dignity and poise is resentful and bitter.
Walsingham gets nary a mention and is instead merged into Cecil - pure laziness, really, especially since it's Cecil's made-up spy network that gets all the write up. Elizebeth herself is a woefully indecisive wanton tart, better suited to grocery aisle book cover than anything in a Philippa Gregory novel. Elizabeth, a woman considered to be fairly politically savvy in a time when women weren't even considered viable rulers, is utterly dependent upon men. When Cecil is away, she turns to Dudley to manage all of her affairs.
Worse, there are redundant phrases in the book, one being that Cecil rarely, if ever, puts his name on documents. Oh yes, because Cecil is the spymaster, right? And he's quite careful? This dumbed down repetitive tripe is a poor excuse for a novel, much less anything written by the Philippa Gregory I had come to respect as a writer. I am offended and insulted that this would pass among her fans, and I am dismayed to see so many giving it positive reviews. It's trash. Dressed up historical trash, but trash nonetheless.
The story is told from the perspectives of Robsart, Dudley and Cecil - never from Elizabeth's perspective at all. While this is somewhat typical of Gregory's work and writing technique, Elizabeth is too central and too enigmatic to benefit from it. Instead, the book seems lazily written, as if it's too much effort to imagine any plausible explanation or motivation for her behavior. Because Elizabeth was such an enigmatic ruler in reality, it's a shame that Gregory didn't think to writer from her perspective. Instead, Elizabeth is almost a sideline character, while the Men do Men things like rule her realm and tell her where to stand and what to do (quite literally - evidently, Elizabeth had no clue how to behave during royal entertainments, and depended upon Dudley to tell her exactly what to do).
There is nothing queenly about Elizabeth in this book. Nor is there anything dashing or appealing about Dudley. In a time when one's bed partners meant life or death, and Elizabeth had first hand experience with that (consider Seymour's beheading as a result of his treasonous plots including Elizabeth herself), it's impossible to believe that she would be so casual about her affairs. It's insulting, especially, considering the real Elizabeth was so careful and calculating.
Suffice it to say, I did pay money for this book (humorously, only because Alison Weir's book was out of stock). I fully intend to write a strongly worded letter to both Ms. Gregory and her publisher requesting a refund.
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