Cracking open a Philippa Gregory novel is like yanking down the blinds and saying you’ll close your eyes for 15 minutes — 30 tops — then waking up in the dark, heavy-limbed. You think you’re stealing an indulgence; it swallows your day whole. What century is it again? The story unfolds in a first person so close you can feel the character’s breath being constricted by her gown. The narrator calls herself “a woman grown”; she’s probably in her teens.
Jones, who has known Gregory for years, said: “This move to do history has been very, very, very important to her, because of everything we’ve been talking about. She is a brilliant historical novelist, and she does her research. I think she just wants to — my sense from her is — she canAll those royal Marys and Elizabeths and variously spelled Katherines we love, and love to hate, occupy just a handful of pages in “Normal Women.
She thought an intuitive starting place was the Norman invasion, which abolished the landowning system that included women. The challenge then became deciding when to end, “because every time I open a newspaper now, I see a new instance of the feudal laws still working.” She always wanted the book to be big: “I didn’t want to do ‘Ten Badass Women.’ … I always wanted to build a national history to sit alongside, for instance, Winston Churchill’s ‘History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
She aspires for “Normal Women” to be the kind of book that would have changed her life if she’d read it as university student. How so? “I would have got on with history a lot quicker. I would have realized its importance a lot quicker. I think any woman reading history has a sense of absence from the pages.”I asked Gregory what she’s working on next, whether she’s looking forward to returning … “‘to your proper work?’” she finished the thought, archly.
After all that, though, yes: “I’m going to go back to novel writing,” Gregory said. “Probably a Tudor novel.”We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: MSTODAYnews - 🏆 275. / 63 Read more »
Source: LuxuryDaily - 🏆 325. / 59 Read more »
Source: RobbReport - 🏆 309. / 63 Read more »
Source: sfexaminer - 🏆 236. / 63 Read more »
Source: RollingStone - 🏆 483. / 51 Read more »
Source: FOX10Phoenix - 🏆 83. / 68 Read more »