Gregory and Me

I have a problem with Phillipa Gregory. I like her. I like her narrative sense. I love how she uses a historical context and makes it unbelievably contemporary. I love how her characters are real, flawed, complex people. But I hate how she never keeps that promise she makes in that seductive, snaring first chapter.

The Other Boleyn Girl, The Constant Princess, The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover and The Other Queen have all been engaging and engrossing. So has the Wideacre trilogy. I loved the proto-feminism of Wideacre but the novel left me immensely disturbed. So did Meridon. If there was ever a contest for moral stand-taking I'd lose by the largest margin. But what Gregory's heroines do is beyond my comprehension. The self-centred heroine of Gregory's Wideacre is not a throwback to the manipulative Scarlett of Gone with the Wind but an extreme representation of a warped desire to claim what she sees as her right. It doesn't make sense. Not to me, at least. I read on in morbid fascination. She gives us the fantastic Meridon who remains but a pale shadow of her alter ego, her granma, the enigmatic Beatrice. The Other Queen recreates the same sense of enigma. It's impossible to see Mary develop into a fully fleshed character and not fall in love with her. And yet, she disappoints.

This almost-rant comes about because I've just finished reading Fallen Skies. Lily Valence begins as a precursor of the flower-child of the 1960s. She's sweet, unspoilt, radiant and promising. There are all the makings of the rebel there. and yet she conforms to the role of the victim. She remains passive and becomes vacuously boring. So does Charlie. Stephen's a brilliant sketch but gets overstretched in his inane acts of violence. The novel also suffers everytime a 'miracle' takes place- when Rory starts speaking, when Coventry gives up his silence. Speech as the only medium of self-articulation becomes limiting. The flavour of the 1920's, so effectively begun, falls flat. The 'minor' characters come in with a lot of promise and then fade into the background.Poor Charlie gets the shortest shrift of all. If only the canvas had been a little more organized, the novel would make a much better read.

And I come back to how I love Gregory and can't wait to read The White Queen but I do so hope the beginning will sustain and the middle will be as interesting as the absolutely dazzling start that Gregory always and always gives to her novels.