[.ca] The Queen of Subtleties: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (ISBN 0060591587)

the palace brought to life...........................:
i adored this book, as it fed my curiousity about the tudor dynasty, and was told from an interesting angle, from down in the kitchen's of the king's court. the story darting back & forth between upstairs in the court & downstairs. it also painted a wonderfully atmospheric image of henry's castle at hampton court, a place i've visited several times & always enjoy soaking up the elegance left by henry & co's legacy. the sweetmaker's kitchen can still be seen here, along with the other kitchens, & it is quite fascinating to view this rabbit warren of a once working industry, as in fact the court here was in fact it's own community, a lot of the original palace & the extensive grounds still remaining, & still elegant with their majestic swans, herons & deer (thankfully, no longer as royal dinner, but now free to grace the lands) - totally magical & enchanting!

This could've been lovely, but the sugar carmellized.:
If I were a betting lady, I'd wager that most teenaged girls will call Anne Boleyn the heroine of this book and say Lucy Cornwallis, the ageing confectioner who falls in love with handsome young Mark Smeaton, was ... well maybe not boring but irrelevant. Lucy was so the mother or confidant figure. But then, maybe most teenaged girls would think the author was Disneyfying Anne to make her appear modern and relevant. What really hurts is that the author admits her deliberate anachonisms: translating the motto on King Henry's jousting tabard as "No Comment" instead of "Declare I dare not." Having the so French Anne name her little dog 'Pixie' instead of what she did name it: 'Por-quoi'. Having her refer to her parents as 'Dad & Mum' at a time when even adult children knelt before their fathers every morning to obtain his blessing. Having Thomas Cromwell call her Anne and give her unsolicited advice - even when she was queen. Cromwell would have been slapped down for treating his betters as his equals. Her constant rants in her narrative to her daughter Elizabeth. No mother shows less than a dignified face to her child. Even if Anne thought of Catherine as "that old hag" (and I laughed over a lot of the author's more original barbs but they did get to be overdone) she would not have been so candid to a girl who she'd always subconciously see as a toddler. Lucy Cornwallis was drawn much more sensitively and perceptively. Her story is worth the lone star. We see her at her work - Well described. Not boring scenes at all. We gradually get her back story. We see this shy self depreciating woman growing more attracted to this handsome young man who draws her out and begins to open her heart to feelings and her senses to what's beyond her kitchen existence. This author's work has substance, but a historical setting and characters do not work for her.

Tempting first chapter, but overall disappointing:
First of all, I'm a big Anne Boleyn fan. I've read almost all books about her, fiction and non fiction alike. I bought this book hoping another great fictionalized account of her fascinating life. The book starts off great, it appeals to the reader and pulls the heartstrings. However, it's downwards from there. The book is told from two points of view, Anne Boleyn's and a servant of Henry VIII, Lucy Cornelius. The chapters narrated by Lucy were dry and mostly emphasized her relationship with Mark Smeaton, the musician who was later condemned to die along with Anne Boleyn's other four lovers. The parts narrated by Anne Boleyn sounded like she was a whiner. The language that she used was coarse and the vocabulary certainly wasn't what you would called 16th century related. It sounded like a person writing for a Cosmopolitan magazine. Overall, the book was a disappointment. Jean Plaidy, Evelyn Anthony, and Margaret Campbell Barnes all wrote much better Anne Boleyn novels.