The Queen's Sorrow
A Novel
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2.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Plain and dutiful and a passionate Catholic, Mary Tudor is overjoyed when she becomes Queen of England. After the misery of her childhood, when her father, Henry VIII, rejected her and her mother, Mary feels at last that she is achieving her destiny. And when she marries Philip of Spain, her happiness is complete.
But Mary's delight quickly turns sour as she realizes that her husband does not love her—indeed, that he finds her devotion irritating. Desperate for a baby, she begins to believe that God is punishing her. Her people are horrified at the severity of the measures she takes and begin to to turn against their queen, who is lonely, frightened, and desperate for love.
Rafael, a member of Philip of Spain's entourage, reluctantly witnesses the tragedy that unfolds as the once-feted queen tightens her cruel hold on the nation. As Rafael becomes closer to Mary, his life—and newfound love—are caught up in the terrible chaos.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
