The Other Boleyn Girl - ah, the joys of matrimony and sisterhood
Posted February 29th, 2008 in All, Books, Entertainment and Entertainment News
“The Other Boleyn Girl” opens in theaters today.
Recipe: Combine one part history with one part soap opera, add a touch of fashionista, shake, serve with a side of steamed feminist perspective and voila - you have yourself some very tasty Philippa Gregory novels.
Historical novels, I should say, and mighty well written ones at that. Philippa Gregory is not your average romance novelist, just as The Other Boleyn Girl is not your average historical novel. Gregory, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in history and a Ph.D. in 18th century literature, combines her particular talent for weaving historical fact (or more to the point, presumed fact) with mesmerizing fiction, resulting in some of the most spellbinding history lessons one could ever hope to read. Her success as a storyteller is only furthered by her ability to analyze and assess what is known or believed about her novels’ subjects, and her historical re-imaginings are as full of vivid details reflecting the genuine sensibilities of the era as they are full of emotional impact.
Indeed, emotion is Gregory’s most powerful tool when it comes to writing historical fiction. Though her novels follow the path of history she injects a fresh perspective, even an alternate explanation, of the way in which historically poignant events unfurled. As a historian and academic herself, she is uniquely capable of capturing the essence of a period of history and wrapping it around her fascinating characters. Gregory uses her talents to re-position the reader at an otherwise well-known point in history, and challenges the reader to imagine what the experience of living through (or not so much) that period was like for the other; she writes of history from the perspective of the “loser,” romance from the perspective of the jilted, patriarchy from the perspective of women. In The Other Boleyn Girl Gregory replaces the usual pedantic history of Henry VIII with a deeply honest portrayal of the inherent paradox of sisterhood - the fact that a sister’s best friend is also silently her greatest rival. The universality of human emotion is Gregory’s needle and thread, and as she spins a story about exotic foreign courts or ill-fated lovers, her readers find themselves deeply invested in the characters she brings to life. Not everyone can imagine being an 18th century monarch, but everyone knows how it feels to fall in love, to be betrayed, to hope against hope itself, and Gregory brings this spark of humanity to her tales.
True to form, The Other Boleyn Girl is Gregory’s tale about the influential Boleyn family’s fight for Henry VIII’s English crown, but it is the setting of sisterhood and rivalry between Ann and Mary Boleyn which brings the story into the reader’s own frame of reference. The novel reflects those themes which are common to both history and contemporary life - ambition, love, lust, denial, resentment, anger, doubt, fear, courage, despair, hope, betrayal, forgiveness. Gregory sorts them all through the filter of history and feeds them back to the reader in a narrative which, but for the grandiose setting, could reflect a life lived in most any place or period.
The commercial success of Gregory’s novels combined with the critical acclaim of Showtime’s series The Tudors have led to the first silver screen adaptation of her work. The Other Boleyn Girl arrives in theatres across the U.S. today.
If you enjoy history, read all of Gregory’s works. If you enjoy fiction, be sure to check out her trilogy (and my favorite) Wideacre, The Favored Child, and Meridon. If you can only manage one, read her first novel Wideacre. And if you just aren’t the reading type, head to the theatres to catch The Other Boleyn Girl on screen and bigger than life. I wouldn’t steer you wrong.
Well, I might. But not about Philippa Gregory.
