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selenakI've read two novels of this author before - The Queen of Subtleties, about Anne Boleyn, and The Sixth Wife (which presents the whole Katharine Parr/ Thomas Seymour/ Elizabeth story from a very unusual perspective and with a twist I haven't seen anywhere else) - and while the first was okay but not extraordinary and the second good, this one is really excellent. One of the reasons why it appears fresh despite being set in an era well-covered by other novelists - to wit, Mary Tudor's reign - is again the point of view. Which is the one of Rafael, a sun-dial maker from Philip's entourage. Spanish characters in novels set in Tudor England usually spent their time being scheming sinister fanatics, unless they're Katherine of Aragorn, in which case they're noble wronged wives. This novel turns this cliché upside down, and it's England which appears very strange and not a little disturbing, thoroughly foreign, while the point of view character is Spanish and trying his best to cope in a country where he doesn't speak the language, his prince and his countrymen are increasingly unpopular and his certainties get shaken.
I must say I find the novel mistitled. Mary Tudor is at best a supporting, if not a minor character. Within that limitation, she's well drawn, a woman full of personal kindness who goes from being greeted by universal acclaim (daughter of the beloved Katharine, wronged princess at last in the sunlight, etc. etc.) via being determined to save her subjects' souls if necessary by fire to being thoroughly hated, with the added tragedy of having fallen in love with her husband who at best felt only dutiful towards her and couldn't get away fast enough, and a fake pregnancy. This is nothing new if you're fond of Tudor novels, and the take on Mary from novelists as diverse as Susan Kay (in what is still the best novel about Elizabeth I., Legacy) and Philippa Gregory, in The Queen's Fool, which has a not dissimilar premise (as the fool of the title is Hannah, not of English origin, either). But as opposed to Gregory, who hardly lets a novel get by without bashing Elizabeth and in her novel about a young Katharine of Aragorn makes her a champion of religious toleration, with Muslim and Jewish confidants (Katharine had many virtues, but this definitely wasn't one of them), Dunn pulls her outsider pov in a way that feels more honest. Rafael hails from a family of conversos - i.e. he has Jewish ancestors who had to convert after 1492 - but this doesn't make him an epigone of religious toleration, it makes him extra careful and a completely faithful Catholic. He can't afford not to be. (Conversos suspected of "relapsing" were doomed.) He sees Mary's determination to make England a Catholic country again as noble and can't understand why anyone wouldn't want her to succeed. When he does start to feel differently, it's not about the cause itself but for individual people whom he has in the course of the novel formed emotional ties with and who suffer because of Mary's policies.
Very occasional glimpses of the Queen aside, most of the novel takes place in London - Rafael and his apprentice Antonio haven't been able to find rooms at an overcrowded court, and so have found lodgings with a London merchant - and Suzannah Dunn is really good at bringing the city to life through the eyes of a stranger. She's also superb in writing children, which not many novelists are and which is pretty crucial, because Rafael's longing for his little son Francisco back in Spain and the bond he forms with the English boy Nicholas are the emotional red thread of the novel, even more than the tentative and delicate romance between Rafael and Nicholas' mother Cecily.
In a way, this is a novel without a hero in the traditional sense; Rafael is the main character, but he's very passive, not just in his current situation as a stranger in a strange land but also in the flashbacks to his old life in Spain; things happen to him; he does not make them happen, except for his relationships with the two boys. The one time he tries to be heroic and does something decisive, in the novel's climactic scene, it has harrowing consequences. And yet this isn't frustrating, which otherwise I find often to be the case with passive main characters; I attribute this to Dunn's writing skills, which make how Rafaels sees and feels the things around him so interesting that you don't mind he's going with the flow.
In the end, the charm of the novel is perhaps best sumned up by Rafael's profession. He designs and installs sun dials - and he's brought to a country where, as a much later wit used to say, the rain stops about twelve times a day.
I must say I find the novel mistitled. Mary Tudor is at best a supporting, if not a minor character. Within that limitation, she's well drawn, a woman full of personal kindness who goes from being greeted by universal acclaim (daughter of the beloved Katharine, wronged princess at last in the sunlight, etc. etc.) via being determined to save her subjects' souls if necessary by fire to being thoroughly hated, with the added tragedy of having fallen in love with her husband who at best felt only dutiful towards her and couldn't get away fast enough, and a fake pregnancy. This is nothing new if you're fond of Tudor novels, and the take on Mary from novelists as diverse as Susan Kay (in what is still the best novel about Elizabeth I., Legacy) and Philippa Gregory, in The Queen's Fool, which has a not dissimilar premise (as the fool of the title is Hannah, not of English origin, either). But as opposed to Gregory, who hardly lets a novel get by without bashing Elizabeth and in her novel about a young Katharine of Aragorn makes her a champion of religious toleration, with Muslim and Jewish confidants (Katharine had many virtues, but this definitely wasn't one of them), Dunn pulls her outsider pov in a way that feels more honest. Rafael hails from a family of conversos - i.e. he has Jewish ancestors who had to convert after 1492 - but this doesn't make him an epigone of religious toleration, it makes him extra careful and a completely faithful Catholic. He can't afford not to be. (Conversos suspected of "relapsing" were doomed.) He sees Mary's determination to make England a Catholic country again as noble and can't understand why anyone wouldn't want her to succeed. When he does start to feel differently, it's not about the cause itself but for individual people whom he has in the course of the novel formed emotional ties with and who suffer because of Mary's policies.
Very occasional glimpses of the Queen aside, most of the novel takes place in London - Rafael and his apprentice Antonio haven't been able to find rooms at an overcrowded court, and so have found lodgings with a London merchant - and Suzannah Dunn is really good at bringing the city to life through the eyes of a stranger. She's also superb in writing children, which not many novelists are and which is pretty crucial, because Rafael's longing for his little son Francisco back in Spain and the bond he forms with the English boy Nicholas are the emotional red thread of the novel, even more than the tentative and delicate romance between Rafael and Nicholas' mother Cecily.
In a way, this is a novel without a hero in the traditional sense; Rafael is the main character, but he's very passive, not just in his current situation as a stranger in a strange land but also in the flashbacks to his old life in Spain; things happen to him; he does not make them happen, except for his relationships with the two boys. The one time he tries to be heroic and does something decisive, in the novel's climactic scene, it has harrowing consequences. And yet this isn't frustrating, which otherwise I find often to be the case with passive main characters; I attribute this to Dunn's writing skills, which make how Rafaels sees and feels the things around him so interesting that you don't mind he's going with the flow.
In the end, the charm of the novel is perhaps best sumned up by Rafael's profession. He designs and installs sun dials - and he's brought to a country where, as a much later wit used to say, the rain stops about twelve times a day.
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Date: 2009-01-14 03:38 pm (UTC)