Review: George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade

If you love the AMC TV show TURN: Washington's Spies, you'll love this non-fiction account of the same topic. I know the show was actually created from Alexander Rose's history book "Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring" but they were both on sale on Kindle and I couldn't decide so I just got both and wound up reading this one first. And honestly, I'm not sure how or why the show claims to be based on a non-fiction book when a non-fiction book is factual... so really, it's just based on history, and this is also a non-fictional book about that history.

I honestly had no idea just how important espionage was during the Revolutionary War. When I thought of this topic, I thought of what I learned in school: founding fathers, minutemen, Paul Revere, etc. But now I know it's so much more than that, and there was so much more going on in the background. They don't teach this in schools, but they should, maybe kids would pay attention.

Never boring or dry, this book really pulls you into the spy ring and let's you get to know each individual involved. At the end, it also explores who female agent 355 might have been. Sometimes, it's so juicy, I can't believe it really happened. It was interesting to compare and contrast it with the show too, which did add some fictional elements and make some changes, but not so much that it draws away from the real history, which makes me love the show even more.

This is precisely the kind of history book I would recommend to people who (wrongly) think history is boring, but it's also thrilling for those who already appreciate history. I don't think I've ever blown through non-fiction this fast.

Review: Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1783-1787 by Winston Graham

After being wounded while fighting in the American Revolutionary War, Ross Poldark returns home to Cornwall, England to find his father dead, his sweetheart engaged to his spoiled cousin, his estate in ruins, and that everyone believed him dead in Virginia. But it takes more than that to keep Ross Poldark down, and he determines to rebuild his life almost entirely from scratch.

The BBC love Poldark - they made a TV series of it in 1975 and now they are remaking it (aired on PBS in the US), and the publishers are reissuing the books along with it. I have been watching the new series and it inspired me to pick up the books. Surprisingly, I have to say this is one of those rare moments when the "movie" is better than the books.

It's a great story with great characters and that is owed to the books, but the narrative of the books is a little stilted at times, which is something I find is common with books written and originally published in the 1940s and 1950s. Maybe it was just a different style of writing that isn't easy for modern readers to appreciate but regardless it takes getting used to.

It also seems the TV series follows the books fairly closely, so that there is not a huge amount of difference between them. Such a rarity means that while it may be enjoyable for people who have already read the books to watch a visual enactment of it, the reverse doesn't hold much for viewers who read the books after watching it. I tend to read the book after seeing the movie because I like to see everything the movie wasn't able to cover. In this case, because it so closely follows the books, reading them doesn't really give you anything the show doesn't. There's a little bit more to Jinny and Jim's story and we get to see more of Demelza's endearing, childlike antics which were mostly removed from the TV show, I think in order to make her seem older (she is only 13 at the start of the books). However, the internal dialogue doesn't really tell us anything the show isn't able to convey. At least, that was the case with the first book. I will likely carry on with the rest of the book series, especially if the TV series doesn't make it all the way to the end (though it likely will), but not right now.

I'm not saying the book wasn't enjoyable, just that it would perhaps have been more enjoyable to read it first, then watch the TV show, but unfortunately I've done it the other way around.

Review: The White Princess by Philippa Gregory

It’s no secret that I felt The Other Boleyn Girl was overrated. But I requested a free review copy of The White Princess, a novel based on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and mother of Henry VIII, because I thought I should give Philippa Gregory another chance. After all, other readers in my family enjoy her novels and I value their opinions.

It’s written in present tense which I’m not a huge fan of because I find more often than not, it comes off sounding pretentious but admittedly, this is well written and it’s the one thing I can’t criticize her for. It’s also written in first person and here again, I can’t criticize Gregory’s ability to write well in first person, but I felt like the nature of it is too restrictive, especially for this complex subject matter. However, what really let this book down was the characterization, mainly of Elizabeth.

For starters, I could not understand how she could be in love with the man who kidnapped and imprisoned her brothers and then declared them, along with herself, illegitimate so he could steal their crown. Elizabeth seems to think he had no other choice but I’m not buying this “woe is Richard” attitude. She also seems to think that if Richard had won at Bosworth, he would have married her but the fact is, he could not marry a bastard and he could not re-legitimize her without admitting that he was wrong to declare her brother illegitimate and thus, admitting that he was a usurper and not the lawful king. I could maybe excuse Elizabeth’s expectations with Richard as youthful ignorance but even her mother seems to agree Richard would have married her had he survived. So this struck me as Gregory not fully understanding the situation or perhaps just choosing to disregard the reality of the situation to suit her fanciful story. I don’t mind using a creative license in novels but it has to be believable and it’s this kind of disregard for realism that makes it difficult to enjoy. For example, I’m okay with Gregory claiming that when Elizabeth’s family took refuge in Westminster Abbey, it was in the dark, damp “crypt under the chapel” even though in reality, they stayed in the luxurious house where the Abbot lived, in his best rooms as his guest. I’m okay with that because while it’s untrue, it’s not completely unbelievable that had the Abbot not been so accommodating, they might have hunkered down in a section of the Abbey where they could secure their safety. So I’m okay with using this idea as dramatic license, but I’m not okay with things that don’t even make sense within the contexts of Gregory’s own fiction. She makes a point of showing how Henry had to legitimize Elizabeth before marrying her because a king can’t marry a bastard so why would this not apply to Richard as well?

What bothered me about The White Queen miniseries (and I suspect of the book as well, which precedes The White Princess) was the portrayal that the women involved were the true engineers of these pivotal moments in history and the men were practically just their pawns. I enjoy stories about strong, influential women in history and how they cope with the turbulent events they often get caught up in, but I feel like Gregory’s portrayal of this is very unrealistic. However, Elizabeth of York was in a very different situation than her mother had been and so The White Princess took the opposite approach and portrayed Elizabeth as a victim and pawn of Henry Tudor and Margaret Beaufort. But Elizabeth does nothing to win favors or gain influence and spends most of the book clueless and passive. Apparently, there's no middle ground with Gregory - women either engineer everything or have no influence at all. Even Henry himself, after Elizabeth responded with “I don’t know” to all his questions, appropriately tells her:

“When I think of the fortune that was spent on your education, Elizabeth, I am really amazed at how little you know.”

I realize that he suspected she knew more than she was admitting but that’s the frustration thing, with one exception, she really didn’t know anything. And while I understand why she doesn’t know anything, the fact that it’s written in first person means the reader doesn’t know anything more than Elizabeth does, which makes for a frustrating read. Here is where third person would have been beneficial and there were many people around Elizabeth whose stories we got tantalizing glimpses of and would had really added more dimension to the story had we been able to see them.

I can also understand why Elizabeth wasn’t scheming and plotting in league with her mother, but I can’t understand why Elizabeth does nothing to improve her own situation. If I were Elizabeth, no matter how much I hated Henry, I’d be doing everything I could to convince him that he can trust me so that perhaps I could have more influence over him. But Elizabeth never even considers this.

Eventually, she does come to care for Henry but I struggled to understand why. He spends most of the book demanding to know what she knows (which is nothing, of course), sulking or throwing a tantrum when yet another “York boy” pops up, and cowering behind an army he has no faith in. He is driven half mad by fear, which is understandable, but it’s hardly going to make a woman fall in love with him. On Henry’s end, he claims to have hoped for Elizabeth’s love from the first moment he met her but again, I’m not really sure why since she is dull and clueless and spends most of the book turning away from him. Henry goes on and on about how she has some kind of inherent likability that all Yorks do and which eludes him, but apart from being pretty and smiling and waving at crowds, I couldn’t see what was so likable about her. It’s not enough to say a character is this or that, if you don’t show me, it falls flat.

I really thought we were going to see a woman who was quietly influential in the shadows of not only her husband but her growing son Henry as well but instead we get a girl who has basically given up on life and is just passively enduring it.

Then there’s Henry. I felt like Gregory’s attempts to paint him as multidimensional missed the mark. On one hand he is cold, calculating, and untrusting but on the other hand he almost immediately begins readily opening up to Elizabeth about his insecurities and fears, despite the fact that she has done nothing to coax this out of him and despite the fact that he never trusts her. Making a character multidimensional doesn’t mean having them do things that don’t make sense.

I get that this is supposed to be a story about a woman who was forced to ride the line between two warring factions and how she was powerless to stop the people she loved on both sides from destroying one another. I get that it’s supposed to be about a man who is barely able to cling to a throne that was never his and how it will haunt him for all his days. In theory, it sounds like a great story but it just wasn’t executed very well.

CW's Reign

Ad for 'Reign' showing the fictional
'Bash' character and inaccurately
portrayed Dauphin Francis.

I intended this to be a book review blog but after just watching the CW's pilot on Mary, Queen of Scots, I had a few things to say about it. It does contain a few spoilers, I've written it on the assumption of those reading this have already watched the first episode.

The show opens with a teenage Mary living in a convent in France and, after an assassination attempt, is sent to live at the French court, where she briefly had spent some time before when she'd first arrived in France as a child. This of course is inaccurate, the real Mary never lived in a convent, she grew up at the French court after arriving there at five years old. I could excuse this though, it made some sense to introduce the audience to the story at the same time that Mary was being reintroduced to the French court. It means that we learn things about the court as Mary learns them, which helps us empathize with her. Although she knows many of the people at court, she is learning about them as an adult and therefore, in a way, she is new to the court and still settling in. It's a good starting point, even if not true.

When Mary arrives at the French court, we discover that she is betrothed to the Dauphin of France, the heir to the throne, Francis. Understandably for a teen show, it centers on romantic intrigue when Francis is already involved with a random pretty girl at court, complicating his feelings for Mary, while Mary herself finds some emotional refuge with Francis' half brother, the king's bastard 'Bash' (short for Sebastian). Meanwhile, the romantic interest of one of Mary's ladies fills a sub-plot while another of her ladies gets involved with the king himself when he encounters her masturbating after covertly watching a princess of France lose her virginity on her wedding night. While it's true that the consummation of royal marriages often required witnesses, the idea that the maiden Queen of Scotland and her ladies could sneak a peek from behind a screen is pretty far-fetched. Even more far-fetched is the idea that one of them would masturbate in the middle of a stairwell. The scene was heavily edited down and is really only suggestive, you're left not entirely confident that's what she was doing because apparently, the show's producers felt that showing a young woman discovering and exploring her sexuality on her own is more controversial than a teenage girl having an affair with an grown, married man.

The real Francis and Mary

The other two major inaccuracies I spotted were the introduction of a fictional character, Bash, and the portrayal of Francis. I don't mind storytelling involving fictional characters, even some of the best historical fiction authors make use of them, such as Sharon Kay Penman and Bernard Cornwell. It allows the storyteller greater creative freedom and often creates additional sub-plots, giving the story a more complex and multi-dimensional feel. The danger zone of fictional characters in a historical story is when they get too involved with the main historical characters. If taken too far, it becomes unbelievable that a historical figure had quite so much involvement with someone who never existed, unless there is a good reason they never appeared in the history books despite being a pivotal player. We'll see if 'Reign' goes down that path or not but for now, I can understand why they've created a fictional bastard of the king and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers (historically, Diane had no children by the king, only two daughters who could not have been the king's since they were born around the same time he was). Not only does it involve Diane more in the family politics but Bash also serves as an alternate love interest for Mary, which I guess is practically a necessity when your target audience is teenage girls. In reality, though there's no speculation that Mary was ever involved with a king's bastard, for the sake of a good story, Mary would have been in a prime position to find love elsewhere than with her fiance, not because he was already sleeping with other women, or because he felt it politically unwise to marry her, as the show would have you believe. No, in reality the reason would have been much simpler, though admittedly also much less sexy, because the historical Francis was an underdeveloped, sickly little boy. Already a year younger than the developing and tall Mary, Francis' growth was stunted by his health problems and made the age difference between them seem even greater. Though by all accounts, Mary got along with and cared for Francis, it was probably more as a little brother than as a passionate lover. So it's not unreasonable that a fictional story would speculate on Mary finding love elsewhere, I just don't fully understand the need to make Francis a healthy, handsome, strapping young man when he was anything but. Apparently, everyone in this TV show must be attractive and I find it difficult to believe that today's young women are quite so vain that they couldn't appreciate a well portrayed, if unattractive, character. A beautiful young queen and a handsome forbidden bastard evidently isn't enough, pretty much the entire court must be good looking. Even Diane, who as a mistress of the king you might except to be beautiful, is played by an actress in her 30s when in reality she was 20 years the king's senior and approaching 60 by this point.

Scene showing some of the more inaccurate dresses

Appealing to modern young women brings me to my next complaint, the costumes. Apparently, the CW believe that today's teenagers won't be interested in anything even remotely resembling historically accurate costumes. Strapless dresses? Really? Need I say more?

Another romanticized element of this is how much time Mary conveniently gets to spend alone, which of course allows her to have private conversations with Francis and Bash. For the very reason that, in the show, Mary's reputation was nearly ruined when a young man is found in her bed, she equally would not be able to spend so much time wandering around on her own, running into handsome and dashing young men who, of course, fall hopelessly in love with her. In this way, it is more like a fairy tale than history.

While the show might appeal to many for purely entertainment purposes, it's unsurprisingly an epic fail on historical integrity. Still, I can still the appeal as a guilty-pleasure and I support any mainstream entertainment that encourages people, especially young people, to develop an interest in history. If this show gets young women wanting to learn more or picking up books, even novels, about Mary Stuart or French royalty, I hope it runs for a very long time. Perhaps, in that way, it will do for young people what The Tudors did for so many adults, a show that I admittedly loved and that partially sparked my own interest in royal history, despite it's own numerous inaccuracies. Sometimes, a story doesn't have to be historically accurate to be enjoyable and let's hope 'Reign' proves this to be true. I, for one, will continue to watch it if only to see Torrance Coombs' alarmingly beautiful blue eyes again. I never said I was above a bit of eye candy...