The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

Overview

A queen brought low by love compromised and power abused – the tragedy of Mary Tudor.

These are desperate times for Mary Tudor. As England’s first ruling queen, her joy should be complete when she marries Philip, the dashing Prince of Spain. But despite her ardent devotion, he’s making it painfully obvious that he cares little for his new wife – and her struggle to produce an heir only makes him colder towards him. Lonely and depressed, Mary begins to vent her anguish on her people – and England becomes a place of cruelty, persecution and fear.

Mary’s terrible fall from grace is seen through the eyes of Rafael, a Spanish sundial maker who is part of the Prince’s flamboyant entourage. He becomes the one person that she trusts, but his life – and new-found love – will be caught in the chaos that follows…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780007280308
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/04/2008
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	280 KB

About the Author

Suzannah Dunn is the author of nine previous books of fiction: 'Darker Days Than Usual’, 'Blood Sugar', 'Past Caring', ‘Venus Flaring', 'Quite Contrary', 'Tenterhooks', 'Commencing Our Descent', 'Queen of Subtleties' and ‘The Sixth Wife’. Her most recent novel is ‘The Confession of Katherine Howard’. She lives in Shropshire.

Suzannah Dunn is the author of eight previous books of fiction: Darker Days Than Usual, Blood Sugar, Past Caring, Quite Contrary, Venus Flaring, Tenterhooks, Commencing Our Descent and most recently Queen of Subtleties. She lives in Shropshire.

Editorial Reviews

Dunn fails to deliver in her newest melodrama, a meandering historical that chronicles the expedition of Rafael, a Spanish retainer sent on what he is told will be a brief trip to construct a sundial for Mary Tudor. But once he arrives in xenophobic and unstable England, Rafael does little but whine about the weather and how much he misses his wife and son. Unfortunately for Rafael, his project is delayed, and while waiting to return home, he becomes infatuated with Cecily, a tender housekeeper who becomes his constant companion despite their language barrier. They fall in love (albeit excruciatingly slowly), but their affair is complicated by Rafael's conflicting feelings for his wife. Mary, meanwhile, plays a very secondary role until a late-book shift in which she becomes a paramount force in the narrative as it tumbles toward a surprising conclusion. Although Dunn nails Rafael's fascination with sex, and her eye for detail remains sharp, much of the prose feels stilted, and the interminably slow plot is hobbled by a wallowing narrator and facile treatments of isolation, religious tension and icy domestic life. (Dec.)

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Publishers Weekly

With her famous false pregnancy and desperate struggle to hold onto her husband, Philip of Spain, while trying to keep her increasingly Protestant realm Catholic, Mary Tudor-the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon-is the queen whose sorrow pervades a critical time in English history. Dunn has moved from successful British chick lit to historical novels (e.g., The Queen of Subtleties)-all, so far, set during the Tudor period. Her preferred method pairs a royal character with a more ordinary soul in the court's orbit. In this novel, Rafael is part of Philip's entourage, commissioned to create a sundial as a wedding present for Mary. When he encounters the queen by accident in the royal garden, she sees him as a sympathetic, neutral ear and asks for more visits with him. While Rafael waits for his project to be funded in an increasingly volatile and rebellious England, he becomes entangled with the English family with whom he boards. Grittier and less romantic than Philippa Gregory's popular period novels, this book is recommended for public libraries with large historical fiction collections. [Fans of historical fiction set in this period might also be interested in C.W. Gortner's The Last Queen, about Mary Tudor's aunt, Juana of Castile.-Ed.]
—Mary K. Bird-Guilliams

Library Journal