Philippa Gregory

My awe is now over.  I was impressed with “The Other Boleyn Girl”, I was semi-impressed (mostly I guess) with “The Constant Princess” and I was less than thrilled with “The Boleyn Inheritance”.  Now I’m really glad that I never bought it at the bookstore and instead borrowed it from the library.  Now, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a quick read.

I was really interested by the premise.  Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Jane Rochford (Boleyn by marriage); their untold stories about the last decade of King Henry VIII.  I felt terrible for Anne of Cleves.  Her (alleged) crappy family and the feeling of wanting to get away from it all at any cost.  I admire her iron will against Henry’s bouts of rage, her stubborness to see Princess Mary & Elizabeth and her determination to not be remarried to the king after he has Katherine executed.  After all of Henry’s other wives, Katherine appeared to be exactly what he needed.  A pretty filly to prance around and be numb to the events happening around her.  Unfortunately, she was too vain to ever succeed in keeping his love.  Then there’s good ol’ Jane.  Jane the evil and horrid woman who put her SIL and husband to death by claiming to witness their misdeeds.  Sick.

What I hated most about this book and pretty much the one thing that kept me from enjoying the stories was the fact that each woman’s story lasted 4 pages max and during those 4 pages repeated everything from the previous chapter based on their point of view.  I felt like the story only progressed every 50 pages after these women retold the same facts and stories over and over and over again.

This book did not live up to the expectations the other two books had set up.  I admire her storytelling because she can carve out a beautiful story out of bare facts.  But the structure of this story was not good for me.  I had a terrible time staying interested.

Movie: “The Other Boleyn Girl”

One of my girlfriends received “The Other Boleyn Girl” from Amazon the other day.  So she brought it over and I knitted.  We both knew that the movie was going to be nothing like the book and tried to keep an open mind about it.  But in the end, neither of us were entirely satisfied with the movie.

My main objection to the movie is that it bounced around the plotline a lot.  Sure they kept the focus on what Anne Boleyn was trying to do, but all of the other characters just seemed….like their stories weren’t being told properly.  When you are making a movie, you need to make sure all of the stories come together or else those characters are completely worthless.

I didn’t so much mind that the movie was scarcely historically correct or failed to follow the book.  It impressed me that the girls’ mother actually had more lines that showed her motherly side instead of a hard-edged bitch.  Everyone’s love life just seemed out of control.  It’s like, Mary’s married, now she’s a mistress, now she’s a mom, oh wait, there’s her husband, now she’s living alone and she’s married again to some guy you see on screen a handful of times and it’s never suggested in the movie that there’s a romantic interest.  WTF.  The only way I even made the connection was because I had read the book.  Then with Anne it was even more haphazard.

I’m definitely going to borrow the movie again and try to watch it and take it for what it’s worth.  Because the first time around I couldn’t help but make all of these mental notes about what I didn’t really like about it.