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Elizabeth I (2011)

by Margaret George(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0670022535 (ISBN13: 9780670022533)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: I am not one for historical fiction(though one of my all time time favourites is Dorothy Dunnetts King Hereafter)and even less so for a novel written in the first person but I found myself engrossed in this book for a week and shedding a tear or two at the end. It probably helps that I have read a bit about the Elizabethans and Elizabeth herself so it was interesting to indulge in what may have been going on in her mind during the later parts of her reign. Being a woman staggering toward middle age I can also understand some of her reasons for her championing of Essex and her blindness to his faults and I have huge empathy for her connection to Dudley...the love of her life. In fact in many ways she is probably one of the few historical figures I can empathise with and und... moreerstand and this book has aided that. George has turned Elizabeth into a very real woman for me and the account of her death was peculiarly affecting.Georges juxtaposition of Elizabeth with Lettice Knollys, the woman who stole Dudley from her gives relief to the claustrophobia of seeing from only one persons eyes and provides us with another view of the often apparently erratic ruler. Its a device in this case that left me wishing I had a similiarly detached pair of eyes viewing my own story...a testament to how much I identified with our Lizzie.I know little of Lettice historically this novel has rendered her sympathetically. It has also made me want to find out more.Historical fans should not be disappointed. This is a meaty book, it is rare for me to spend a week reading just one tome and I enjoyed ever bit.
review 2: I really like this author. She did not capture Elizabeth, but it was a great read. After finishing the book, I gained very little understanding of this queen. The book went back and forth from the queen to her half-sister/half-cousin Lettice and they seemed almost like the same woman. This should have been the second of two volumes. I would really liked to have read the earlier life of Elizabeth First before she became 55. It would have helped to have a family tree and a cast of characters. I wrote out and referred to my sheet on who was who, but I know I was often confused. This put too much labor on the reader.I should have read Mary Queen of Scots first and then I might have had better understanding of what was omitted. The execution of Mary by Queen Elizabeth was not in this book, and to me it should have been.I did really enjoy the book, but it would have been better expanded into two volumes and with more of the basic background and especially the early background of Elizabeth whose childhood would have been fascinating background psychology. I wanted to author to be more factual. At the end she explains where she changed the facts of history, but I would prefer she stick more to the true facts. There is plenty there to keep the book going. It was a very good and entertaining book to read.Maybe she will write Volume One dealing with Elizabeth as a child, teenager, young adult, mature adult and up to age 55. less

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