Saturday 2 January 2010

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

The Other Boleyn GirlSynopsis from the back cover: Mary Boleyn catches the eye of Henry VIII when she comes to court as a girl of fourteen.
Dazzled by the golden prince, Mary's joy is cut short when she discovers that she is a pawn in the dynastic plots of her family. When the capricious king's interest wanes, Mary is ordered to pass on her knowledge of how to please him to her friend and rival: her sister, Anne.
Anne soon becomes irresistible to Henry, and Mary can do nothing but watch her sister's rise. Anne stops at nothing to achieve her own ambition. From now on, Mary will be no more than the other Boleyn girl. But beyond the court is a man who dares to challenge the power of her family to offer Mary a life of freedom and passion. If only she has the courage to break away - before the Boleyn enemies turn on the Boleyn girls...
My thoughts: The author does a fantastic job of describing everything that's going on and I felt like I was right there sitting in the Tudor court. But I do think the book was a bit long, there were parts of the book that really didn’t seem to add anything to the story.

The story is told from Mary Boleyn's point of view. Mary did get on my nerves a bit because she was so innocent and naïve all the time. She was a bit of a doormat. Whenever anyone tells her to do something she goes and does it. It was a bit boring after a while. But she does stand up for herself more towards the end.

My favourite character was George, Mary and Anne's brother. He was funny, and he obviously loved his sisters (although the story suggests he loved them too much…). I would have liked to see more of him in the story, as he was one of the most interesting characters.

Anne is portrayed as being extremely selfish. Everything is all about her and what makes it worse is that all of the other characters worship her too, even before she gets entangled with the king. I did enjoy the rivalry between Anne and her sister Mary, the way they snapped at each other was quite funny. Their love/hate relationship could have been made so much more interesting though.

Overall I did enjoy the story, although a few bits were quite gruesome, mainly the childbirth/miscarriage scenes. Also I felt that the ending was a bit rushed. If you paid attention in history class then you’ll know what happened to Anne Boleyn in the end, but the author didn’t give enough information about the other characters towards the end. There is only a page or so saying what happens to the rest of the family after Anne is dead, and even that didn‘t explain much. I was left feeling a bit annoyed.

1 comment:

  1. hahaha its funny that you just post a opinion about this book, because i just start reding it yesterday, such a coincidence lo0l.

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