Fiery French passions ignite ELIZABETH BUCHAN
HISTORICAL
THE BURNING CHAMBERS by Kate Mosse (Mantle £20)
IN 1562, the divisions between Catholics and Protestants in southern France are widening. Minding her father’s bookshop in Carcassonne, Minou Joubert, 19, receives an anonymous letter sealed with a family crest containing the message: ‘She knows that you live.’
She is still puzzling over its meaning when a chance encounter with Piet Reydon, a Huguenot convert, sets in train life-changing events.
Labyrinth, Kate Mosse’s deeply felt portrayal of the doomed Cathars, was a bestseller. The Burning Chambers is set later but is infused with the same empathy for, and intimate knowledge of, the Languedoc, and is the first in a sequence which will span 300 years of war and diaspora.
Impressively bold and ambitious, it features betrayals, broken friendship, family secrets and the horrors of fanaticism. Fans will love it.
THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER by Victoria Glendinning (Duckworth Overlook £16.99)
AFTER Henry VIII declares himself head of the Church, replacing the Pope, a mighty plunder of the rich abbeys and religious houses begins.
Among those looted is Shaftesbury Abbey, where Agnes Peppin, a butcher’s daughter, intended to spend her life as a nun. Cast out, her survival is somewhat questionable.
Making her way to London, she takes refuge at an establishment run by an ex-nun, where her experience of the world is rapidly expanded, only to fall in love with the ambitious and rash Thomas Wyatt.
The author is a distinguished biographer as well as novelist. Assured, quietly gripping, surprising and educative, with a terrific central character, it pins down the precarious nature of life in 16th-century England and is an absolute pleasure.
JANE SEYMOUR: THE HAUNTED QUEEN by Alison Weir (Headline Review £18.99)
WHAT more could be written about Henry VIII’s six queens? The answer in Alison Weir’s third title in her fictional tour de force is: quite a lot.
As shown in her biographies, she has a knack of grounding her subject in interesting and textural detail, and the Jane Seymour who emerges from this 500- page novel has substance and depth.
From the family loving girl who fancies she will become a nun to the quiet, intelligent presence who snares a king tormented by the need for a male heir, Jane is presented as a much more interesting personality than many would have imagined.
It is an enjoyable and deceptively easy read — and the author’s theories as to what killed Jane after giving birth to the longed-for male heir are fascinating.
Next up, Anne of Cleves.