The Enemies of Versailles

The Enemies of Versailles is the final book in the salacious Mistresses of Versailles trilogy by Sally Christie. Louis XV has spent a few years getting to know his unmarried daughters since his last mistress died, the Marquise de Pompadour. He has not had much interest in women for four years. He was devastated by the death of the Marquise. However, four years and 100+ pages later he meets thirty year old Jeanne Becu, later known as Madame du Barry, and falls in love.

This love affair is different from Louis' earlier mistresses. I am assuming it is due to him now being 60 years old. He has a hard time getting her installed at Versailles because a woman already presented at Court must present her. No one will. Jeanne grew up in a brothel and worked as a prostitute herself later in life. The aristocracy will not accept her as the King's mistress. I see him as not trying that hard to help her since he gets the opportunity to sleep with her daily anyway. He does not seem as enamored with her as he was with his earlier mistresses or she would have had a bedroom next to his at Versailles in no time.  Eventually she gets a home an hour outside of Versailles, with travel time Louis would not have been able to stand with his prior mistresses. He was too eager for them.

There is nothing steamy in this novel as there was in the first two novels of the trilogy. It is all about Court intrigue with the spinster daughters plotting silliness and the grandson, Louis XVI, not being able to consummate his marriage.  The book was not interesting. I expected to devour it as I had with the first two books but it took me two weeks to read it. What a disappointment!

The virginity of the daughters and the dauphine, Marie Antoinette, was written in a more titillating manner than the sections where Jeanne was with Louis in the bedroom.  I thought it odd at first but then realized that these women were the enemies of Jeanne and perhaps the book was really about them, the enemies of Versailles. In a trilogy titled the Mistress of Versailles you would expect the books to be about the mistresses but maybe I got this one wrong. There were, in fact, more scenes written about Louis' family than about his mistress. It all ended with the French Revolution and the guillotine which I also thought was odd since the trilogy was about Louis XV.

This was a most unsatisfying end to the trilogy. It might be because the truth about Louis' last relationship was boring and the author didn't have much to work with but it just didn't sizzle.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Gown

I was supposed to receive an advanced review copy of The Gown from the publisher in October, 2018 through the Early Reviewer's Program at Librarything but, sadly, it never arrived in the mail. I took the book out of my local library as soon as it hit the shelves. The Gown is the story of Queen Elizabeth II's wedding gown.

The story begins by introducing the characters who work for Thomas Hartnell, the designer of the wedding gown as well as the introduction of a parallel plot. However, this introduction was 140 pages long. 140 pages out of a 370 page book is a long time to wait before a reader gets to the point of a book, in this case, working on Elizabeth's wedding dress.

The two main characters Ann Hughes, an English girl, and Miriam Dassin, a French immigrant who survived Nazi France, were embroiderers who worked on the wedding dress in 1947. In Toronto in 2016 Heather Mackenzie discovers in a box left to her by her grandmother some embroideries that matched those on Queen Elizabeth's wedding gown. Heather also finds an old photo of her grandmother with the now famous artist Dassin. She travels to London to learn more about her grandmother's past. The story alternates between the 1947 plot and the 2016 plot.

The story had a slow start. Once the characters began working on creating Elizabeth's dress, the book became exciting. The seamstresses and embroiderers were under great pressure to keep the dress's design a secret. Some were used by reporters masquerading as boyfriends in attempts at getting inside information on the gown. Even the parallel plot became more exciting too.

The two main female characters were quite interesting. They were strong women, unusually strong for the era. Miriam was a French Jew who was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. Within months of her arrival in London she is working on a royal princess's gown.  That is an incredible turnaround for a one year period of time.  Ann has her own rite of passage but since I don't want to give away any more spoilers, I will leave her story out of my review.

Despite the slow start, this was a wonderful story. The reader could feel the emotional drain of WWII on England before the announcement of Elizabeth's engagement. Her happy announcement catapulted the nation out of its feelings of depression into joy. Perhaps any happy event would have done the trick but it was Elizabeth who got the job done. This begs the question whether her connection with her subjects was strong from this time forward because people remember how they felt during the time of her wedding.

At the conclusion of the story the author interviewed Betty Foster who was one of the four seamstresses who created Elizabeth's gown.  This interview gave me goosebumps as it validated the story I just read.

4 out of 5 stars! 

The Island of Sea Women

Lisa See's latest book was just published in March, 2019. The story takes place on a Korean island called Jeju and is about two women who are haenyeo, female divers for food. Young-sook and Mi-ja have been best friends since early childhood. Mi-ja is the orphan daughter of a Japanese collaborator and Young-sook is the daughter of the leader of the haenyeo collective. The story covers a period of time from the 1930s through the end of the Korean War with a subplot from 2008.

The haenyeo culture is unique as the women are in charge of providing the family finances and the men stay home and care for the children. Their job of harvesting fish from the sea for sale or to feed their families can be unsafe. One haenyeo in the story was almost killed by an octopus and Young-sook's mother died while helping her gather her first abalone. The women continue this work because they feel freedom from the cares of the world when they are underwater.

Our two heroines remain close friends until they marry and discover their husbands have different political views. They are also separated by living in different villages but their distance is primarily created by their husbands being on opposite political sides of Japanese colonialism in Korea and the Korean War. Each woman takes her husband's side and one betrays another during a period known in history as the Jeju Uprising. Between 14,000 and 30,000 people were murdered by American controlled South Korean government officials in 1948 and 1949. The author wove this event, covered up for decades by the South Korean government, into the story.  Most of the people killed were men as Young-sook remarks in the story that she lived on the Island of Widows.

This story reminded me of Mary Lynn Bracht's White Chrysanthemum which I read last year. It, too, was about a family of haenyeo on Jeju Island during World War II.  However, the See book reads rather slowly and had less poignancy than her books usually have. The characters were not as compelling as those in White Chrysanthemum. It is hard not to compare the two books as they are both about the haenyeo during the World War II era on Jeju Island and they were published one year apart. They are quite similar but White Chrysanthemum is a more interesting read and it was my top book for 2018.

I was surprised by the slow pace. A Lisa See book usually has a good pace. The plot was good and it could have been an exciting read. It wasn't. The book was OK, just not up to par with all of the author's earlier books. My expectations may have been unfairly high due to the similarities with Chrysanthemum but it was hard not to compare the books. While the characters in The Island of Sea Women were compelling, I felt that Young-sook was really the only character that made you want to keep reading. In a book that is supposed to be about the relationship between two women, having one woman not that strong of a character was a problem for me.

I am still glad that I read this book. I never want to pass up a Lisa See novel. It just wasn't the blockbuster I was expecting.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Gondola Maker

The Gondola Maker is the first book in Laura Morelli's Venetian Artisan series. It features a fictional young gondola maker named Luca Vianello who is supposed to inherit his family's esteemed gondola making business.  His parents want him to marry a girl from the glassblowing guild in order to strengthen their political ties in Venice. After a fight with his father over the poor treatment of his mother, the boatyard accidentally catches fire and is destroyed. Luca flees. He fears being charged criminally as well as being unsure about whether his family survived the fire.

Knowing he needs a job in order to eat, Luca hires himself out to the owner of one of the largest ferry stations in Venice. His job is to load and unload boxes of merchandise for customers. It is a menial job compared to the artistry he was used to performing at home. Soon after his hire, Luca gains the attention of a master painter named  Trevisan and Master Trevisan hires him to restore an old gondola that he inherited from his father. Luca works hard on the gondola so that he can offer a ride to a girl he has met at Master Trevisan's studio. However, the girl like many others Trevisan has painted will be sexually assaulted by the man who purchased her painting, with her father pocketing alot of money. The girl will have to go into a convent though, as she will no longer be marriageable.

The Gondola Maker shows the reader the level of craftsmanship that is required to construct a top quality gondola.  You also learn about the life of a 16th century Venetian, particularly the gondoliers with their secret codes for maneuvering the canals of Venice and their custom of making a few extra bucks with their dishonest practices. The author's knowledge of the era is evident. She paints a realistic picture of 16th century Venice with women being treated as non-entities, extravagant palaces for the rich and ordering into slavery any citizen who violates the laws.

While I enjoyed the book I have to say the second book in the series is better. The Painter's Apprentice was an exquisite tale of a female apprentice of Master Trevisan. Her main problem is preventing the boatman from telling everyone her secret. These gondoliers just can't be trusted but they sure are entertaining!

Tombland

I have been looking forward to this installment of the Matthew Shardlake Mystery from C. J. Sansom for two years since I finished reading the last book in the series. This is the 7th book in the series.

The story opens with Matthew Shardlake being approached by courtiers for Lady Elizabeth, not yet a princess or queen, to investigate who killed Edith Boleyn. Elizabeth's relative, John Boleyn, has been arrested for the murder of his former wife and is expected to be found guilty and hanged. Edith Boleyn disappeared nine years ago and John Boleyn remarried as soon as he could legally declare her dead. People were suspicious when he remarried so quickly.

Shardlake learns that two nearby landowners want Boleyn's property and he begins his investigation with them. It appears that the boundary lines from the old monastery deeds were unclear and an adjoining landowner was declaring ownership of part of Boleyn's property when Edith's body was found lying in the mud on the boundary line. Lady Elizabeth's courtiers believe that this scandal could put her in danger with her brother King Edward's Protector, Edward Seymour. Anne Boleyn had been executed just thirteen years prior and the country was still suspicious of the Boleyn family.

I enjoyed this story but feel that the pace was slow. It's 866 pages did not scare me off but as I was reading I felt that I was not gaining any momentum.  This is unusual for a C. J. Sansom book. I normally find them riveting. There were incredible twists and turns in the story and the characters acted realistically for the time period. The aristocracy were brutal during the Middle Ages! However, if the story was told in 100 - 200 pages less it may have been better reading.

If you have been reading the Shardlake series you will want to read Tombland. While it can be read as a stand alone novel, readers new to the series should be prepared for its slow pace.

The book began as a whodunnit and then turned into historical fiction which is what the author is celebrated for writing. Perhaps I was expecting a historical mystery given the story's beginning. The first two chapters moved quickly as the reason for the story was introduced.  Then the pace slowed. Tombland just isn't my favorite book in the series but I am still glad that I read it, mainly to keep up with the characters.

The Weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink won the Book Club Award from the National Jewish Council in 2017.  It's chapters alternate between the stories of two women, one living in the 1660s and one in the 2000s. Ester Velasquez was an immigrant to London from Amsterdam and was permitted to be a scribe for a blind rabbi for a period of time before the plague hit the city.  Helen Watt was a historian who ran across some newly discovered Jewish documents from the 1600s that had been kept hidden in a storeroom under the staircase of a London mansion.

The Weight of Ink is not for the faint of heart. It is 560 pages long and it is not a light read. What keeps the reader interested is primarily the incredible character Ester. You want to know how life turned out for her who had a rough start in life. She lost her entire family while she was young, in separate incidents, and then was sent by her Amsterdam community to London to live with a stranger, Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes. The Rabbi becomes her mentor which puts her at risk. Women in that era were not supposed to be educated, let alone work as a scribe, and doing so affected their marriage prospects.  Ester was required by society to hide her intelligence. Helen Watt is a less compelling character. She suffers from Parkinson's Disease and is near retirement age. Consequently, she needed help in studying the documents that she found as quickly as possible so that she could publish a paper about them before her retirement. She hired a Jewish American student, Aaron Levy, to assist her. She is somewhat similar to Ester in that she must kowtow to younger male historians at her college who are always ready to take any advantage over her that they can. Ester, however, is the reason you will want to read this book.

Since Ester is scribing for a blind rabbi the novel is heavy on Jewish theology and Jewish heresies of the time period. Secular philosophies of the era are also discussed. The history of London's Jewish community is also shown in great detail.

It took me awhile to finish this book but it was a satisfying read. I am both glad and sad that I have finished reading it! I am happy to be done with it but sad that this lovely story is over. The author, Rachel Kadish, is an incredibly talented writer. This is her third book.

Way over 5 out of 5 stars!

Murder by Misrule

Murder by Misrule is Anna Castle's first book in her Francis Bacon Mystery Series. Francis Bacon is a 25 year old new barrister at Gray's Inn who is tasked by his uncle, Lord Burghley, to find out who killed fellow barrister Tobias Smythson in Westminster. Smythson had been working with Bacon's uncle to get information on the Catholics in the country, particularly the Jesuits who may have been bringing unlawful pamphlets into the country. With Mary Stuart condemned to die, England's Catholic citizens were in turmoil and Queen Elizabeth wanted to stamp out their rebellion. Smythson's death meant that the three law students he tutored needed to find someone new. The student's leader,Thomas Clarady, picked Bacon and Clarady primarily assisted Bacon in the investigation.

The mystery formula was followed here with the murder occurring early in the novel and the suspects and red herrings being in their proper order. The fact that the story took place in 1586 was secondary to the solving of the crime. Murder by Misrule, while a historical mystery, followed the formula of a straight mystery not the formula of a historical mystery.

I found the novel to be enormously entertaining. I was engaged in the plot from the first chapter. It had a light feel to it similar to a cozy mystery which made it a fast read.  The Francis Bacon character was interesting. As a 25 year old he had a brilliant mind but was a bumbling young man who had made some major political mistakes in his career. This is not how I remember him from history but everyone has to start somewhere.

Murder by Misrule was a pleasant surprise. I didn't know what to expect since I had never heard of the author before. Now I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

The Splendor Before the Dark

The Splendor Before the Dark is the sequel to Margaret George's The Confessions of Young Nero.  The story begins when Nero is 26 and has been emporer for 9 years.  It covers a 4 year period of time which is also the last 4 years of Nero's life.

The story opens with Nero helping to put out the Great Fire of Rome.  Here he is a benevolent ruler with concern for the poor citizens as well as the rich citizens of Rome. His political and administrative skills are top notch.

Rumors begin to circulate that Nero started the fire which wasn't true because he was out of town when it started. He brushes the rumors aside initially because all emporers have to deal with them. Nero sets about to rebuild Rome with grand public features even though some wealthy citizens will have to be displaced to make room for them. The houses will be grander and the placement of them will be organized into a beautiful city plan. The rumors become more intense that Nero started the fire so that he could rebuild the city and he decides that he can no longer ignore them. He comes up with a plan to blame the Christians for the fire.

The author presents a Nero who loved to stage plays, play music, engage in athletics and compose lyrics. He is a man who fiercely loved 2 women. Acte is the girl he grew up with and who knew him as he really was, not as an emporer. He adored his wife of 2 years, Poppaea. When she died he was devastated. This is a sensitive man, not the man of history that we have come to know, except for the part about blaming and punishing the Christians by burning, crucifixion and feeding them to beasts.

While I enjoyed the book in the beginning, it was slower reading than the first book The Confessions of Young Nero. It was a little wordy and less exciting than Confessions. It took me 6 weeks to read it! In addition, I don't remember Nero being such a nice guy in the first book. He had to become evil in order to survive his family.  The family was rough. They killed each other for power. There seems to be a missing link between what Nero was like at the end of book 1 and what he was like in book 2. Am I missing something here?  Did becoming emporer free him to be himself or did being the only surviving member of the family free him? I am just speculating.

Margaret George is well known for her research on the people she writes about.  It is confusing to me that she gives us a nice Nero. Nero is not known historically as a nice person. She shows us Nero as a human being and explains in the Afterward that most of what we know about Nero was written by his enemies who had an agenda to destroy his reputation.  However, she whitewashes the treatment he ordered against the Christians by preferring to focus on his leisure activities both before and after he made decisions to torture and kill them. This did not sit well with me. Most of the book was about Nero finding time to be an artist. If he was truly just an artist, why does she need to end the book with his successor killing everyone associated with him? He does not sound like a benevolent ruler here and it seems that she left out many of his ruthless actions as emporer.

She explains in her Afterward that she agrees with the historian Edward Champlain that Nero's actions were rational and that much of what he did resonated with contemporary social attitudes. She further stated that the Christians may have started the Great Fire in order to bring about the end times which is exactly what Nero believed and was the reason he persecuted them. However, she writes in the novel that they had no involvement in the fires but writes in the Afterward that they may have. In addition, she states that no one knows how widespread the persecution was and that the Christians may not have known about it. Ms. George has failed to read all of the historical accounts of the persecution. I find her thoughts offensive.

What is "the dark" referred to in the title? It's the last chapter where Nero is forced to commit suicide for an unknown reason. If you know history you know why he had to commit suicide. If all you know is the history presented in this book you must be confused.

The Splendor Before the Dark is thought provoking. It gives the reader a different perspective on Nero than history provided but still shows him as a ruthless killer albeit indirectly. I must state, though, that my opinion of Margaret George has changed. In historical fiction writing the reader expects the author to be true to history. In this book she wasn't. It seems to me that she and Nero have the same opinion on Christianity. Otherwise she would not have focused so much attention on how more important his leisure activities were than ordering the slaughter of a group of people.

2 out of 5 stars.

The Rivals of Versailles

The Rivals of Versailles picks up the story of the mistresses of Louis XV from the first book in this trilogy The Sisters of Versailles.

After Louis XV recovered from an illness he found himself without a mistress. He soon met a bourgeois girl from Paris, Jeanne Poisson, and fell in love. Jeanne, not being royal, needed a name worthy of Versailles and was granted a title that was held by someone else. She became the Marquise de Pompadour and was given a large apartment formerly occupied by Louis' last mistress Marie Anne Mailly Nesle. The newly minted Marquise redecorated the space to distinguish herself from her predecessor and for four years captivated the king. After suffering two miscarriages with Louis her doctor said she must abstain from sex if she wanted to live.

The Marquise told Louis that their sex life was over and he began to stray. However, he needed her company and political advise but found that he could no longer physically climb the stairs to her apartment. Louis ordered a new and much larger apartment for her that was closer to his bedroom even though he had found a new lover, which astonished her enemies.

The Marquise found ways to get Louis girls but in a way where she retained control over the situation. When the girls began to ask for treasures, or her banishment, they were sent home. Louis, now 50, still loved the Marquise and made her a Duchesse while he continued to have sex with many other women, proving her power in the Empire.

After I finished the book my first thought was how well did Louis govern when he was with a mistress every afternoon, evening and most weekends? This does not count the number of weeks he spent holidaying at various chateaux each year.  He seemed to me to be a party animal but it also appeared that this socializing was required by the French Court. How could Louis possibly have spent enough time on governing his nation?

Louis' loyalty to the Marquise/Duchesse was interesting to say the least. Why stay loyal to her but cheat on her with other women? Note that his wife, the Queen, was still alive and living at Versailles while all of his sexual affairs were happening.

The Marquise/Duchesse certainly had a hold on Louis' heart. Her path to power was no different than those of the mistresses in Part 1 of this Trilogy.  Was he in love? It seems so but he had been in love with his Queen too and stayed loyal to her long past the time expected by his Court.

I am looking forward to the third and final installment in this trilogy.

5 of of 5 stars.

The Sisters of Versailles

The Sisters of Versailles is the first book in the Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy.  It is a fictionalized account of the true story of the 4 Mailly Nesle sisters who were all mistresses of Louis XV, both concurrently and sequentially, during a ten year period of time.

The chapters alternate between the stories of each sister from the time the oldest, Louise, left their childhood home to be married and eventually was sent to Versailles where she worked for the Queen.  There she met the King but did not become involved with him until his aides asked her to be his mistress as he was becoming bored with his wife. Their relationship was one of mutual love and respect. However, Louise was a meek and mild woman and was not prepared for the strong personality of her younger sister Pauline when she arrived for a visit.  Pauline took over at Louis' Court and pushed her sister out of the king's bedroom.

Pauline flirted with the king and he fell in love. Pauline would not sleep with him until he arranged a good marriage for her. Once the marriage took place the king scandalized the nation by supplanting the new husband on the wedding night. Pauline was more interested in obtaining political power and was not in love with the king. When Pauline died after the birth of a child the foolish Louise invited the next youngest sister Diane to visit. A mistake for sure but before Diane arrives another sister, Marie Anne, obtains a job as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and moves to Versailles. She brings her married sister Hortense with her.

Louise gets talked into resigning her position with the Queen and Marie Anne soon has her banished from Versailles. Marie Anne is Louis' next mistress and then Marie Anne and Diane together as a threesome.  After the king falls ill and is expected to die he banishes Marie Anne and Diane so that he can confess his sins and receive the final sacrament. He recovers but does not ask for them back as his confession was published.

This story was well written.  I was engaged from the first page and could not put this book down.  Of course, the salacious material probably made it more interesting but the reader still needs good writing to stay engaged.

What confounded me was that all of these sisters had a religious upbringing.  I guess it didn't take as all but one was quickly willing to commit adultery with the king and didn't bat an eye about back-stabbing a sibling. In the beginning chapter when they were still together in the family home they seemed to be close. I guess that old adage that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" holds true here.

Will I read the next book in the trilogy? Absolutely! I look forward to it.

5 out of 5 stars.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori is Ruth Downie's 8th Gaius Ruso Medicus historical mystery. The series features protagonist Gaius Ruso, a Roman physician, and his British wife Tilla, an expert on herbs. Together they make up an amateur sleuthing team.

The story opens with the death of Serena, the wife of Ruso's former associate Doctor Valens, in the steamy waters at Aquae Sulis (now known as the City of Bath). Serena had been having an affair but the prime suspect is Valens himself according to her powerful father Pertinus. Valens goes into hiding but sends his friend Albinus to fetch Ruso to help him nail Terentius, the man Serena was having the affair with. Terentius is an engineer at the baths and is in charge of the bath plug. Ruso arrives at Aquae Sulis with his wife Tilla, baby Mara and the 2 slaves they purchased in Rome in the prior novel Vita Brevis and begins his investigation.

I am glad that the series is back in Brittania.  The sleuthing works best here. However, I am still unclear why the author is trying to get one of the main characters, Tilla, to change from being an independent woman to a submissive Roman wife. We readers came to love the Tilla character as she was in the first novel, brash and bossy. It's a bad idea to change the personality of a main character. Ruso has changed too but for him it has been more of a growing experience. Tilla just seems stunted from the earlier novels in the series.

The whodunnit aspect of the story was OK.  These two did not make sleuthing mistakes in the earlier novels but they have made them in the past two installments of the series. It doesn't sit well with me. I can't remember reading any other mystery novel where the amateur sleuth made a wrong decision on where to take their investigation. It isn't how mysteries are written.

I had a difficult time staying interested in the book. With a stunted Tilla and the team not really working together as they used to, it was somewhat boring. Memento Mori is the second book in a row from this series to disappoint me so I doubt if I will keep reading it.

2019 Historical Fiction Challenge Sign-Up

It's hard to believe that reading challenges are already being announced for next year. The Historical Fiction Challenge is one of my favorites so I will be rejoining the challenge in 2019. However, I will be reducing the number of books that I will be reading to 10, the Renaissance Reader level. I signed up to read 25 historical fiction books this year and I am struggling with my interest in reading in general so I am not sure if I will meet my mark. With 10 as a goal I know that I can more than meet the challenge.