The Queen of Subtleties
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in The Queen of Subtleties for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'The Queen of Subtleties’ offers a stunningly refreshing way of retelling an old story. I often abandon historical novels nowadays, but I really could not put this one down. It brings Anne Boleyn to life as never before, and, probably for the first time ever in fiction, Henry VIII emerges as a truly credible character in an authentic setting.' Alison Weir, author of The Six Wives of Henry VIII
‘A remarkable writer, a lyricist of ordinary life and ordinary people transfigured by extreme emotions.' Daily Telegraph
'Suzannah Dunn is that rarity among contemporary novelists: a genuine stylist. Her prose is like truffles – rich, rare, dark, but never cloying.' Wendy Perriam
‘Her ear for the rhythms of speech is unerring, her feeling for the minutiae of experience acute. It takes a good deal of artistry to create the illusion of real life, and she has managed something more difficult still, which is to who us how strange real life can be.' The Times
‘A remarkable writer, a lyricist of ordinary life and ordinary people transfigured by extreme emotions.'
Christopher Hart, Daily Telegraph
'Suzannah Dunn is that rarity among contemporary novelists: a genuine stylist. Her prose is like truffles – rich, rare, dark, but never cloying.' Wendy Perriam
‘Her ear for the rhythms of speech is unerring, her feeling for the minutiae of experience acute. It takes a good deal of artistry to create the illusion of real life, and she has managed something more difficult still, which is to who us how strange real life can be.' Christina Koning, The Times
The Independent
'A boisterous historical recreation.'
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I love historical fiction. However, this novel is a wet squib on just about every level.
My biggest criticism is for the writer's use of speech. She frequently has her characters say and think in very modern language. I simply cannot stretch my imagination enough to believe that a 16th-century person would say "Yeah", "Yep", "What d'ya mean?", "I only just dropped by", "Beautiful kid", "He's kidding himself" ... the list could go on and on. The whole thing has the ring of 21st-century American soap opera. But then, maybe the TV watching audience is the author's intended readership. To that end she may have succeeded.
Also, there are an awful lot of facial reactions in Dunn's Tudor England. Everyone seems to spend their time "nodding, dreamily" or "breathing so that no one else could hear" with "rolling eyes", "eyes dip away into a smile" or "flickering eyes". No emotion is subtle enough that it cannot be described in clanging detail. Ultimately vague detail. And all of these penny-dreadful phrases do nothing but detract us.
Furthermore, the book could boast of more unusual, distracting and idiocycratic use of punctuation than any other book I've ever read (or, in this case, partially read). The amount of commas littered within the text are truly phenomenal!
Perhaps the biggest crime is the sheer mind-numbingly boring tale itself. Not an awful lot happens. Not an awful lot is said. Years pass by from one scene to the next, scenes again from which not an awful lot can be learned.
A difficult book to enjoy. An easy book to put down.
My biggest criticism is for the writer's use of speech. She frequently has her characters say and think in very modern language. I simply cannot stretch my imagination enough to believe that a 16th-century person would say "Yeah", "Yep", "What d'ya mean?", "I only just dropped by", "Beautiful kid", "He's kidding himself" ... the list could go on and on. The whole thing has the ring of 21st-century American soap opera. But then, maybe the TV watching audience is the author's intended readership. To that end she may have succeeded.
Also, there are an awful lot of facial reactions in Dunn's Tudor England. Everyone seems to spend their time "nodding, dreamily" or "breathing so that no one else could hear" with "rolling eyes", "eyes dip away into a smile" or "flickering eyes". No emotion is subtle enough that it cannot be described in clanging detail. Ultimately vague detail. And all of these penny-dreadful phrases do nothing but detract us.
Furthermore, the book could boast of more unusual, distracting and idiocycratic use of punctuation than any other book I've ever read (or, in this case, partially read). The amount of commas littered within the text are truly phenomenal!
Perhaps the biggest crime is the sheer mind-numbingly boring tale itself. Not an awful lot happens. Not an awful lot is said. Years pass by from one scene to the next, scenes again from which not an awful lot can be learned.
A difficult book to enjoy. An easy book to put down.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was intrigued to read this book as it is the first of this author I have read and was hoping to find her to be another interesting historical fiction writer but unfortunately I have been disappointed. I agree with many other reviews in the fact that the modern language is out of place and jarring, one particualarly annoying one was 'its not you its me'!!! What was she thinking? Another one comes up when Anne refers to the Pope as being 'some dried up bloke in Rome' this seemed particularly out of place and being the slight history geek that I am I looked the word bloke up to see if it was a Tudor word but in fact it came about more than three hundred years later in the 1850s. Surely this is the sort of thing which a good editor would have picked up on and amended.
Historical nit picking aside there are some good moments in this book, particularly the section where Anne is told of Henry's jousting accident is convincing but I really do not see why it needed to be changed so that 'Harry' Norris passed this news to Anne rather than her Uncle.
The story of Lucy the confectioner and her assistant Richard is nice but doesn't really seem to have a purpose, although there was a potential to make them more relevant, but this was ignored. Instead they just held up the story and confused the chronology.
Overall a potentially good idea to look at the story of Anne Boleyn through another perspective but it was really disappointing. I will think twice before buying another book recommended by Alison Weir! My only consolation is that this was a third book in a 3 for 2 offer!
Historical nit picking aside there are some good moments in this book, particularly the section where Anne is told of Henry's jousting accident is convincing but I really do not see why it needed to be changed so that 'Harry' Norris passed this news to Anne rather than her Uncle.
The story of Lucy the confectioner and her assistant Richard is nice but doesn't really seem to have a purpose, although there was a potential to make them more relevant, but this was ignored. Instead they just held up the story and confused the chronology.
Overall a potentially good idea to look at the story of Anne Boleyn through another perspective but it was really disappointing. I will think twice before buying another book recommended by Alison Weir! My only consolation is that this was a third book in a 3 for 2 offer!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm sorry, but any book set in Tudor times that includes the words 'You've got to be kidding' deserves to be hurled with VERY GREAT FORCE at the nearest wall!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Boring, irritating and trite
I am wary of 'historical' novels and only bought this one because of the glowing reviews from, amongst others, Alison Weir. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Tessa66
Queen of Subtleties by S Dunn
Yes I agree with one of the last reviewers: most of the reveiws here are too harsh!
This is quite a well-told story with well-drawn characters and quite evocative of the... Read more
This is quite a well-told story with well-drawn characters and quite evocative of the... Read more
Published 7 months ago by deborah r clarkson
Not so subtle!
'Queen of Subtleties' by Suzannah Dunn is truly awful: badly written, atrociously punctuated (how can anyone use so many colons and commas? Read more
Published 12 months ago by Historia
i agree with the other reviewers - disappointing and irritating
I am an avid historical reader and I love Phillipa Gregory, David Starkey and Alison Weir and others of that ilk so when i bought this book, I hoped that it would be the same sort... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Susan Coolidge
Just pants!
I love historical fiction and the story of Anne Boleyn never ceases to amaze...but this attempt at a novel was just no good....
Published 21 months ago by K. sowden
Very Intriguing
Before you put the book down as a pointess read, I picked up this book as a holiday read, never having read much historical fiction but having the half knowledge about Henry VIII... Read more
Published 21 months ago by frankie
Anne Bolyn
Liked it but thought more of a novel still did not feel i knew the woman herself. The confectioner story was good and would like to have known more about her.
Published on 12 May 2010 by Hope
I struggled to finish this
Having just read Dunn's The Confession of Katherine Howard which I loved, I decided to read this, her first 'historical' novel. Read more
Published on 8 May 2010 by Roman Clodia
Waste of time
It's been said by other reviewers, but the book is just so badly written. I have to agree with those who have compared it unfavourably to Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl,... Read more
Published on 19 May 2009 by Kristin
I don't think it was disappointing! Read me!
I can't believe how depressing all these reviews are!! I really enjoyed this novel and though it was interesting how the two different characters stories worked slowly to converge... Read more
Published on 9 April 2009 by Ms. S. Edwrds
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
