The Other Queen [Paperback]

"The Other Queen" is about Mary, Queen of Scots' imprisonment in England, focusing on the early years of her imprisonment. The story alternates between three perspectives: George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick who were charged with responsibility for the Queen; the third narrator being Mary, Queen of Scots. Bess is an ambitious social climber who initially thinks that hosting Queen Mary will be a way to advance the family fortunes, but who is dismayed to find that it drains their financial resources instead. George on the other hand becomes infatuated with the Queen, which causes irreparable friction in his own marriage.

I've enjoyed other books by Philippa Gregory, but The Other Queen lacks momentum. It's a long book and not a lot happens (and when things do happen, they're invariably taking place somewhere else). I enjoyed it in a mild way, but it felt so repetitive: countless variations on Bess complaining about money, George idealizing Mary and Mary telling us how charming she is. Bess was actually quite a remarkable woman for her time, but she comes across as being so unpleasant that she failed to elicit my sympathy. You also get the feeling that most of the exciting parts of Mary's life have already taken place, so there is lots of time spent filling in her back story.

As always, Philippa Gregory has done her research. I didn't necessarily agree with her interpretation of Mary's personality, but I couldn't fault it on historical grounds. It did feel however as if she couldn't quite make up her mind what the nature of Mary and Bothwell's relationship had been and why Mary had chosen to marry him, which I think is something that she needed to establish more clearly. Towards the end of the book events also get twisted and compressed, presumably to bring about a neater conclusion. Mary's execution (still 15 years away) is described in a dream sequence: couldn't Philippa Gregory come up with a better way to include it?

I kept waiting for the book to get going, but it never really did. At one stage Bess writes: "I can hardly believe that this nightmare goes on, goes on and on, and we never achieve victory and we never achieve peace". In many ways that reflects how I felt about the book. It's not a bad book, but nor is it terribly compelling.

As a big fan of Philippa Gregory, having read all of her Tutor novels and for the most part finding them reasonably fun, historical romps I was looking forward to her latest offering of "The Other Queen". While this novel never really reaches the same heights as some of her other books such as the much acclaimed: "The Other Boleyn Girl", it is also true to say that this book is far from the worst you will ever read.

As other reviewers have described, the story revolves around the captive years of Mary Queen of Scotts, when she was pretty much imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I, as she eagerly awaited her return to Scotland. Like alot of Gregory's books the story is told from the point of view of three people: the imprisoned but ever determined young Queen, her jailor and host: George Shrewsbury and his wife: the tough speaking and financially aware: Bess of Hardwick.

In my opinion this style of writing is the novel's greatest strength as it prevents the novel from becoming too one-sided. One constantly never knows whose side to be on, which adds a touch of objectivity to the story. As always Gregory delivers an interesting, engaging, witty and absorbing read, yet again bringing the world of Tutor England vividly alive. One cannot help but concede that she is the Queen of the Tutor novel.

On the other hand this novel (like "The Constant Princess") does take a while to get into and is certainly not as addictive as its predessessors. One has to read at least 150 pages before one starts to really get into the story. It is hard to know if this is Gregory's fault or indeed the time period she has selected. After all Gregory can really only add frills to the hard facts. At times the story is a bit repetitive (Bess grumbles about her debts, George worries about his honour, Mary plans her freedom) but I would not necessarily see this as a major weakness of this book. In fact in many ways it adds depth to the characters and makes them all the more human to us.

To conclude I would definitely recommend "the Other Queen" to all Philippa Gregory fans and indeed anyone who is interested in learning more about Mary Queen of Scot's captive years.

I bought The Other Queen having never read any of Gregory's other novels but having very much enjoyed the film version of The Other Boleyn Girl. The plight of Mary Stuart has been a subject that has fascinated me from a very young age (strange child, I know) and I had been enjoying another series of books set in Tudor England so when I happened upon this novel in a local bookstore I set to reading it straight away.

The story Gregory tells in some 400+ pages could be told in 100. It's not that the book is a difficult read it is just so damned repetitive and monotonous. Despite manipulating the structure of the book to try to some extent to hide this fact, which she does by alternating between the perspectives of the three characters Bess and George Talbot and Mary Stuart herself, there is no escaping the fact that the characters simply repeat themselves over and over again. Even when the narrative moves forward the characters do not; Bess only muses over the safety of her fortune and houses; George Talbot constantly longs to be close to the Scots Queen but is a man of honour and cannot betray his own sovereign; Mary Stuart is Queen consort and how dare anyone deny her freedom, what an usurper Elizabeth is! These are the ONLY thoughts rattling around the characters otherwise empty heads. After the first few chapters you have read all that the characters have to say, all that they have to think about and everything thereafter is the same sentiment reworded - and sometimes Gregory does not even bother to reword it.

The characters themselves are very one dimensional. Wherever Gregory has tried to give them some depth she doesn't do so with due sentiment or subtly and as such the characters just come over as false and contradicting themselves. I have no doubt that Bess Talbot was a truly remarkable and unique woman in her day - but Gregory has turned her into a thoroughly detestable character which I am sure was never her intention. Bess is the one of the three characters with whom the reader should identify with most but there is absolutely nothing in Gregory's portrayal of her to cause the reader to warm to her. In George Talbot Gregory has pandered too much to the Mills-&-Boons-reading segment of her fan base; he's simply too weak a man and too weak a character. Worse still, to my mind she has done Mary Stuart a great disservice as her character in The Other Queen elicits no intrigue and very little sympathy.

Neither do I understand the need to tell the story through the eyes of three characters when one would do. This is not done cleverly nor does it add anything to the enjoyment of the book or the understanding of the conflicting interests at play. We do not have the same parts of the story told through three different eyes, as in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, the story just flits from one character to other as the plot moves, back and forth and back and forth, adding nothing new which makes no sense. These three characters are all in close proximity and living the same chain of events, if Gregory were heart set on approaching the book from this angle then it would have been far more interesting had she chosen three different characters to focus on, some combination of; Bess, Norfolk & Cecil or even Mary, Bess and Elizabeth. One character from the rising, one from Mary Stuarts "court" and one from Elizabeth's, or even just Elizabeth and Mary - now THAT would have been interesting.

All in all I was very disappointed with the book. It seems to me that Gregory wrote this novel with very little to form the basis of a novel, perhaps feeling that this patricular story would strike a cord in the same way that Boleyn story did. I have stuck with it to the end out of respect for the story of Mary Stuart but I think it's safe to say that this is my first and last Philippa Gregory novel.