Yesterday, I finished Sharon Kay Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept. At 748 pages, it spans over 20 years of the 12th century and imagines the war of succession between Countess Maude of Anjou and Count Stephen of Blois as they battle for the crown of England, which would usher in the Plantagenet dynasty. And we all know what that means: the Eleanor of Aquitaine! Richard the Lionhearted! War of the Roses! Lancaster versus York! Richard III and the princes in the tower!
This is the second Penman novel I’ve read; the first, The Sunne in Splendour, I picked up on a recommendation after they dug up Richard III in a car park. I have a few bones to pick with her style, but otherwise I find her novels engaging and even romantic, which I realize is an odd word to attach to a survey of England’s bloody and sordid royal misdeeds. On the whole, they are extremely well-researched and the attention to detail is gratifying: with very few exceptions that Penman herself admits, if she puts a monarch at a certain castle on a certain day, you can be sure that there are plenty of primary sources that confirm it. She also does her level best to humanize characters that have been swelled up into mythical legends or monsters by the passage of time, which occasionally veers towards the self-indulgent but on the whole works very well. Even if it isn’t strictly realistic at times, it is most certainly earnest. I want to believe her portrayals, which must count for something.
As far as techniques I don’t like so much, she takes great pleasure in relating stories that are likely apocryphal. I certainly understand the urge, and it does make for neater story telling. At the same time, it feels a little dishonest. The next one is purely stylistic: if there’s ever a time skip, the reader learns what has happened in the interim via a character’s long-winded info-dump exposition. It’s almost word-for-word “As you know, Bob…” It’s clumsy. Lastly, she weaves in original characters, often as major players, and doesn’t inform the audience until the afterword. It’s well done, but like I said with the tendency towards the apocryphal, it feels dishonest.
My complaints are not enough to stop me from reading further. Unlike almost every English historian ever, she stops right before the Tudors and focuses her efforts on the centuries before Henry Tudor emerged victorious at Bosworth Field. To be frank, I’m burned out on the Tudors and appreciate the War of the Roses getting the same in-depth, human treatment that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn get so often. I’m looking forward to making my way through the rest of her books.
I have a soft spot in my heart for English history. Ancient Mediterranean Studies may be where my credentials lie, but everything Battle of Hastings onward is my hobby.
I started reading it on Sunday, which means that I blew through it reading over 100 pages per day. I wish it didn’t take a vacation to remind me how much joy I derive from pleasure reading.
Words with Hannah 