Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction Area | LIMBURG JO Want | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Fiction Area | LIMBURG JO Want | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Unfolding in the heady world of the glittering Restoration court, A Want of Kindness follows an expendable princess on her unlikely progress to becoming queen, through the religion, politics, disease, deceit, and treachery of the time.
The wicked, bawdy Restoration court is no place for a child princess. Ten-year-old Anne cuts an odd figure: a sickly child, she is drawn towards improper pursuits. Cards, sweetmeats, scandal, and gossip with her Ladies of the Bedchamber figure large in her life. But as King Charles' niece, Anne is also a political pawn, who will be forced to play her part in the troubled Stuart dynasty.
Transformed from overlooked princess to the heiress of England, she will be forced to overcome grief for her lost children, the political maneuverings of her sister and her closest friends, and her own betrayal of her father, before the fullness of her destiny is revealed. In A Want of Kindness , Limburg has created a richly realized time and world, and in Anne, a complex and all-too-human protagonist.
Author Notes
Joanne Limburg is the author of a memoir, The Woman Who Thought Too Much , about her struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which was praised by Hilary Mantel, among others. This is her first novel. She lives in Cambridge, England.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her first novel, Limburg re-creates the life of Lady Anne of York, the late 17th-century granddaughter of the martyred Charles I, niece of the restored Charles II, daughter of James II, and future Queen of England. She grows up a weak-eyed and pious child in the court of her charismatic uncle, with her sister, Mary. Married off to Prince George of Denmark, Anne suffers numerous miscarriages; her surviving son, William, Duke of Gloucester, is sickly from birth. There is little love lost between Protestant Anne and her Catholic-leaning father, so Anne barely misses a beat after James is overthrown by Mary's husband, William of Orange, in the Glorious Revolution. Unfortunately, Anne's relationship with her sister takes a serious hit after Mary becomes queen and keeps Anne on a short financial leash. The novel ends before Anne can ascend to the throne, but the story told here is tragic without being especially dramatic. The historical record does not make Anne an easy character to portray or love, but Limburg goes full Hilary Mantel in burrowing deep into her life and the politics of the Stuart court. Writing in short chapters interspersed with actual letters to, by, and about Lady Anne, Limburg proves adept at creating the inner life of an English queen who has been overlooked by history. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Limburgs first novel is an intimate portrait of a Stuart princess whom history has occasionally underestimated. Princess Anne, daughter of James, Duke of York, and niece of Charles II, the monarch who occupies the newly restored throne of England, grows up at a sensitive time. As a child, Anne is coddled and encouraged to gorge herself in a court relishing pleasure after 30 years of Puritan rule. Older sister Mary weds Prince William of Orange, a short, hunchbacked general Anne thinks of as this Dutch Abortion. As she matures, Anne forms a particularly close friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, one of her ladies-in-waiting. Annes arranged marriage to George, Prince of Denmark, proves to be a love match. However, childbearing is problematic for both royal sisters: Mary cannot conceive, and Anne, despite at least 17 pregnancies before age 35, gives birth to only one comparatively healthy child, her son, William, Duke of Gloucester. After Charles death, the ongoing clash between Papism and Anglicanism continues to divide many families, not least the royals: though Anne and Mary are firm Protestants, their father, James II, who ascends to the throne, is Catholic. Mary and William depose James and restore a Protestant regime, which they rule jointly. Anne is next in line followed by Gloucester. Her former regard for Mary quickly cools, as Mary restricts her allowance, criticizes her gambling, and, in the ultimate betrayal, forces Sarah from Annes side. The narrative is linear, providing serial glimpses into Annes obsessions, anxieties, and many physical challenges, including smallpox as a child, miscarriages, stillbirths, and crippling gout. Small scenes are telling: Annes enmity toward William of Orange is amply summed up when he hogs a dish of peas. This is decidedly a scholarly approach to historical fiction, complete with scrupulous adherence to the diction of the day and excerpts from Annes actual correspondence. The abrupt and inconclusive ending appears to signal a sequel. Limburg succeeds in humanizing Anne and bringing her worldview to vivid life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, was born in 1665 and came to the British throne in 1702. In her first novel, Limburg traces Anne's life from the age of 10, when her uncle, Charles II, is king. Anne is an awkward child, with poor eyesight and a tendency to overeat. She is close to her father (the eventual James II), but her staunch Protestantism and his conversion to Roman Catholicism cause a rift. Her relationship with her sister, Mary, is also tricky, especially after Mary and her husband, William of Orange, ascend to the throne. Anne's own marriage, to Prince George of Denmark, is a happy one, but most of her 17 pregnancies fail, and none of her children survive childhood. (Mary, herself childless, blames Anne's incessant breeding on the fact that she and Prince George share a bed.) Limburg weaves into her narrative a number of actual letters Anne addressed to friends such as Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Authentic, immersive, and meticulous, the book will satisfy readers with an appetite for serious historical fiction.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Queen Anne was in the epilogue to Antonia Fraser's "Mary Queen of Scots." During a search of the catacombs of Westminster Abbey, Fraser relates, it was discovered that Mary (Anne's great-great-grandmother) was "far from lying alone in her tomb." Among her companions were the "18 pathetic babies born dead to Queen Anne" and her "sole child to survive infancy." All buried before Anne's coronation, these dead children are, nevertheless, what most people remember. How, we wonder, did she survive the agony? In her new novel, "A Want of Kindness," Joanne Limburg offers a key. The chambers of Anne's heart, like the "passages, staircases and closets" of St. James's Palace, are neglected. Being blind, or choosing to be blind, to the scale of her misfortunes is one way for Anne to cope, but this renders Limburg's task more difficult. Anne wrote copious letters, some of which are inserted verbatim into the narrative, and although conjecture is the historical novelist's accepted territory, Limburg is too faithful to her subject to sex up one of Britain's least sexy monarchs. Instead, God is Anne's most intimate confessor. It's a clever ploy, allowing dutiful piety and flagellating acknowledgment of her "great abuse" of his heavenly goodness to give way to a conversational explanation for her pain and resultant bad temper: "Dr. Raddiffe says it is most likely the gout." Limburg expertly leavens the sanctimonious with the comical. There is sadness too. While others sidle and swerve through the political and religious hoopla of late-17th-century London court life, Anne, with her watering eyes and comfort eating, merely plods, plaintive and often afraid. When the riding she enjoys is curtailed by the fall that may have brought her first pregnancy to its unhappy end, she is reduced to leading a heavy, anxious, uncertain and unsettled life, a life led sitting down, with a distracting pack of cards in the hand and a comforting comfit in the pocket. But Anne is also a yearner. She longs for female companionship, particularly for her "dear Mrs. Freeman," her pet name for Sarah Churchill, later Duchess of Marlborough. She is also tormented by the efforts of her father, James II, to return the country to Roman Catholicism, since Anne, along with her older sister, Mary (wife of William of Orange, later William III), is a faithful Protestant. The religious and political history is integral to Anne's story. It's not surprising, then, that Limburg is sometimes constrained by the need to get certain information across. Despite the comprehensive dramatis personae at the book's start, readers unfamiliar with the Glorious Revolution would benefit from a little preparatory homework, the better to relish Limburg's dexterous employment of short scenes to do the vital poignant work. The return of Anne's sister Mary to London from Holland, for example, with the two women embracing but barely recognizing each other, is a perfect study in loneliness. Although I respected Limburg's stated desire "to use whenever possible the language that was written and spoken at the time," I was less sure about the insertion of real documents in an Old World-y type font. Paradoxically, the effect is to distance the reader from the person who wrote those letters. Of course this simply reflects reality: We cannot know her. However, while rightly reflecting Anne's very unmodern acceptance, after some anguish, of all her dead children as God's will, this distancing language risks reducing both our visceral ache over those small coffins laid about Mary, Queen of Scots, and our ache for Anne herself. It's impossible, though, not to be moved. "How shall I bear my life, Mrs. Freeman?" Anne cries at the novel's end. That we care about the answer is Limburg's gift to Anne, and a fine gift too. God, it turns out, is Queen Anne's favorite confessor, to whom she writes intimate letters. KATHARINE GRANT'S latest novel is "Sedition."
Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] Shy, awkward, and shortsighted, the young Lady Anne of York is out of place in the witty and elegant court of her uncle, King Charles II, and largely ignored by its sophisticated courtiers, leaving her with nothing to do but eat and play cards. She is, however, in line for the throne, which means she is not allowed to choose her companions, adding to her loneliness and isolation. Charles's death in 1685 and her father's loss of the crown to her sister and her brother-in-law thrust Anne into the royal limelight and treacherous politics. Fortunately, there is one friend whom she can trust. Sarah Jennings, future Duchess of Marlborough, leads her devoted and devout mistress through the dangerous intrigues of court and church. Limburg uses primary source material to great effect in unveiling the personality behind this queen whose name is associated with Britain's Augustan Age. Verdict Memoirist Limburg's (The Woman Who Thought Too Much) first novel will appeal to devotees of Stuart history and fans of Philippa Gregory.-Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.