Elizabeth Bowen3.5 Eva Trout, Elizabeth Bowen’s last novel, epitomizes her bold exploration of the territory between the comedy of manners and cutting social commentary.
Orphaned at a young age, Eva has found a home of sorts in Worcestershire with her former schoolteacher, Iseult Arbles, and Iseult's husband, Eric. From a safe distance in London, her legal guardian, Constantine, assumes that all's well. But Eva's flighty, romantic nature hasn't entirely clicked with the Arbles household, and Eva is plotting to escape. When she sets out to hock her Jaguar and disappear without a trace, she unwittingly leaves a paper trail for her various custodians–and all kinds of trouble–to follow.
Antonia Fraser5.0 She was the quintessentially regal: statuesque, beautiful. Birth gave her claim to two nations' thrones. Her marriage to the young French dauphin promised a 3rd. Instead, Mary Stuart became victim of her impulsive heart, scandalizing her world with foolish passion leading to abduction, rape & murder. Betrayed by those she trusted, she'd be lured into a power struggle, only to lose to her envious, unforgiving cousin, Elizabeth I. This is the story of a queen who lost a throne for love, pampered & adored even as she was to be beheaded.
As enumerated in an "Author's Note", Fraser aims (1) to test the truth of legends surrounding the subject & (2) to set Queen Mary in the context of the age in which she lived. Her portrait is largely sympathetic. Tho she stresses what she sees as Mary's virtues, she believes that Scotland at the time required an extraordinarily strong ruler to pull the nobles into line.
The book dismantles legends about Mary arising during & after her lifetime. Fraser recounts the circumstances surrounding the plot to murder the Queen's 2nd husband Darnley in detail. At the York Conference, the Regent Moray produced the Casket Letters, presented as love letters from Mary to her 3rd husband, Bothwell, with whom she had allegedly plotted to kill Darnley. After rigorous research, Fraser concludes that they were forgeries, an amalgamation of real letters that Mary wrote & love letters written to Bothwell by one of his mistresses.
