The Tapestry

I found myself dissatisfied after finishing Nancy Bilyeau's novel of Tudor England, The Tapestry (#487).  I think that was for two reasons.  The Tapestry is the third of three novels featuring Joanna Stafford, former Dominican novice, turned out of Dartford Priory under Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, and distant cousin to the king himself.  Her story began with The Crown, which I admired very much, and continued with The Chalice, which my library did not purchase. 

I think, similar to Stieg Larsson's trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, that Nancy Bilyeau has written one story, divided into three separate volumes, and that if you don't read all of them in sequence, you miss critical elements of the plot.  So right from the beginning of The Tapestry, I felt I was missing information that would have been pertinent.  So the lesson to be learned from that is to be sure to read all three books in order.

The second reason I was left feeling dissatisfied was that the tension of the story seemed to peter out about a third of the way through the book, when the plot to bring down Cromwell proved to be linked to necromancers in Germany, the very place Joanna's fiancé had disappeared after their aborted wedding.  I admired The Crown for not going with the obvious romantic ending, but here The Tapestry devolved into just another complicated romance with a plot to kill Joanna thrown into the mix.  Paracelsus, Nostradamus, Dr. Faust - just not my thing.  And perhaps it's just me, but I wound up feeling that Joanna herself deserved a trip to Tower Hill far more than most of the people who wound up being executed in this story.  Although she relented at the last minute (apparently in The Chalice), she did wind up inadvertently destroying the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves.  Joanna spent much of The Tapestry feeling like a hypocrite.  Well, if the shoe fits...

I suppose I am judging this book so harshly because I expected so much from it, and, in my opinion, it didn't deliver.  Also, I wish Ms. Bilyeau had included Julia Fox's excellent biography of Jane Boleyn (the evil Lady Rochford here), or Hilary Mantel's sympathetic portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in her two Booker Prize winning novels in her bibliography.  It might have led to far more accurate and nuanced depictions of real persons, but of course, that would eliminated such black and ruthless villains from the plot. I realize The Tapestry is fiction, but I prefer it when assimilating the historical record into the story is done seamlessly.