New Release Paperback December 1st 2009It would be hard for me to break how I feel about Mary it would have to be a strong novel. But this has defiantly has caught my eye. Perspectives can change and I am more than willing.
"Her name was Mary Tudor. First of the Tudor queens, she has gone down in history as Bloody Mary. But does she deserve her vicious reputation?
She was the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, and half-sister to Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Mary Tudor's life began as the sweetly innocent, pampered princess of Wales-until the age of eleven when the father she adored cast aside the mother she worshipped and declared Mary a bastard. Only after years of exile did Mary finally rise to the throne alongside the man who, aside from her father, was her greatest love-and her greatest betrayer.
Told by Mary herself and the people around her, this grand-scale novel takes us back to the glittering court of sixteenth-century England, and tells the tragic story of a fascinating, largely misunderstood woman who withstood the treachery and passion around her only to become one of England's most vilified queens."
Too many books - too little time!
ReplyDeleteOH SO TRUE, I AM SWAMPED WITH THEM NOW.
ReplyDeleteI have this one on my TBR pile as well. I am pretty set in my opinion on Mary but I am always open to reading more about her. Wish I could get my hands on a ARC! :)
ReplyDeleteThis sounds good. I haven't yet become set in my opinion about Mary yet - I have only read 1 book about her so this could change things maybe.
ReplyDeletewould love to read this one.
ReplyDelete-Aimee
www.myflutteringheart.blogspot.com
It would be interesting to see how the novelist handles Mary's story. Certainly she would be a very sympathetic character when she was younger; she went through a lot when her father decided he wanted to be rid of her mother and she was an outcast for years, her Catholicism going against the grain of her half-brother Edward VI's continuation of the Reformation.
ReplyDeleteBut after she became queen, she was no Mary Sunshine, so it might be difficult for a novelist to convince readers to sympathize with her political decisions. We could still sympathize, however, with her barrenness and her desperation to have children for personal as well as political reasons -- and over having a husband who as King of Spain would never live in England as a subordinate partner in the marriage.
I just can not stop thinking about a movie I watched about Jane Grey with Helen Bohemia, (if I got her last name wrong sorry) It was a older movie and Queen Mary in that movie besides Jane's mother Francis was a witch, just plain evil, both of them.
ReplyDeleteI do sympathize with Mary to a point, like Leslie had mentioned her father and her barrenness. I truly began to sympathize with Mary during the past season of Tudors on Showtime. This season Mary had grown into a beautiful young woman and previously I hated her. But when I watched the episode where Mary befriended her new step mother Anne of Cleve's. It was Mary heartbreaking to see Mary fall for him and then when her father decided no more marriage to Anne he sent her cousin packing. No one remembered Mary or cared, when her chances for having children flew by . It was such a good episode of Tudors, I hated Mary up until then .
Hi, I'm Julianne Lee, the author of this book.
ReplyDeleteI'm thrilled at the enthusiasm I'm finding for "Her Mother's Daughter." I do hope you all will enjoy reading it.
To set the record straight regarding Mary, I don't expect anyone to change their minds about the burnings, except possibly to have a glimpse of her situation and perhaps some insight on why she made the decisions she did. I don't think any of us, as twenty-first century people, can be sanguine about the practice of burning at the stake, but I think if we take the period as a whole and not judge those folks by modern standards, we can understand why people used to behave the way they did.
I also saw that dreadful film about Jane Grey with Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes, and was shocked at how bad (and horribly inaccurate) it was in general, and how Mary was portrayed as utterly psychotic. Had she been as crazy as she was portrayed in that movie, she never would have ascended the throne. In any case, I find Mary more neurotic than psychotic. She definitely had emotional problems, but was at least lucid.
I don't have an agenda regarding Mary, or anyone else in this book. I only wished to explore another possible viewpoint.
See what you think about it. Release date for the book is December 1.
Julianne Lee
Julianne thank you for paying a visit , you are most welcomed here.
ReplyDeleteNow you did it I am really going to have to get my hands on it now. I too think she was more neurotic. That movie was so bad I do not think I even watched the whole thing. Or I just erased the ending from my mind.
The more I learn about Mary the more I sympathize with her. Having the father that she did and what happened between her parents more than likely messed with her head. She narrowly escaped her own fathers wrath.