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The Wise Woman: A Novel, by Philippa Gregory
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#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory weaves an unforgettable tale of a young woman’s sorcery and desire in Henry VIII’s England, where magic, lust, and power are forever intertwined.
Growing up as an abandoned outcast on the moors, young Alys’ only company is her cruel foster mother, Morach, the local wise woman who is whispered to practice the dark arts. Alys joins a nunnery to escape the poverty and loneliness she has felt all her life, but all too soon her sanctuary is destroyed. King Henry VIII’s followers burn the holy place to the ground, and Alys only just manages to escape with her life, haunted by the screams of her sisters as they burned to death.
She finds work in a castle not far from where she grew up as an old lord’s scribe, where she falls obsessively in love with his son Hugo. But Hugo is already married to a proud woman named Catherine. Driven to desperation by her desire, she summons the most dangerous powers Morach taught her, but quickly the passionate triangle of Alys, Hugo, and Catherine begins to explode, launching them into uncharted sexual waters. The magic Alys has conjured now has a life of its own—a life that is horrifyingly and disastrously out of control.
Is she a witch? Since heresy means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alys is in mortal danger, treading a perilous path between her faith and her own power.
- Sales Rank: #64449 in Books
- Brand: Gregory, Philippa
- Model: 3830244
- Published on: 2008-05-27
- Released on: 2008-05-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.20" w x 5.25" l, .95 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The author of the Wideacre trilogy offers another intense, absorbing tale, a grisly drama of passion and witchcraft in 16th-century England. Growing up as an ill-used apprentice to Morach, the much-feared wise woman of the moors, Alys finds respite by joining an order of Catholic nuns. When young Lord Hugo and his men burn the abbey to the ground during a drunken rampage, Alys is the only one to escape; she flees back to Morach, consumed with guilt at having abandoned her dying sisters. Summoned to minister to Lord Hugh, Hugo's father, Alys soon finds herself deeply involved in the treachery and intrigue surrounding the old man's attempts to have his son's marriage to the barren Lady Catherine annulled. Attracted to Hugo despite his murderous past, Alys begins to practice witchcraft in earnest to rid him of Catherine and become his wife. Her spells work all too well: Catherine's long-awaited pregnancy ends disastrously, and Hugo comes to love Alys, but in a sickly haze of lust that provides no basis for marriage. Alys soon finds herself so sunk in evil, so removed from God's love, that only a truly shocking gesture can bring about her salvation. Gregory adeptly manipulates hair-raising horror and mounting suspense, brilliantly evoking the period's turbulent atmosphere. Dou ble day Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This new novel by the author of Wideacre (S. & S., 1987) and other popular historical fiction profiles a woman versed in charms, conjuring, and fortune-telling who nonetheless falls into catastrophic misfortunes time after time. Escaping from an English convent, young Alys learns the arts of healing and magic from the "wise woman" who takes her in. Her struggle to find an independent life takes her among an array of characters, including a mediocre lover, a sickly old man still very much in control of the lives around him, and two challenging women: Marach and Mother Hildebrande. Gregory weaves a vivid tapestry of life in the 16th century, including plenty of sex, as the narrative strains toward a not-unexpected end.
- M.E. Chitty, Fairchild International Lib. Inst. , Plainfield, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A spite-spitting, direful tale set in the reign of England's Henry VIII--and starring a worthy successor to the terrible Beatrice, the murderous prime mover of Gregory's Wideacre (1987), of the Lacey Trilogy. Here, a fierce young woman, status-climbing, learns poor Anne Boleyn's lesson about the price of ambition: ``Never cross a powerful man.'' Young Alys, dreaming, smells the smoke of the burning abbey, but she runs away, leaving her adored Mother Hildebrand to perish- -and returning to the cold, dirty hut of Morach, the local ``wise woman'' who raised her. Mother Hildebrand had given Alys education, cleanliness, beautiful surroundings--and safety. But Morach, who gave Alys a vocation and a hard dose of truth, declares: ``There's no safety for you or for me...[we] do not accord with the way men want.'' When Alys is taken to the castle to heal old Lord Hugh, however, she's overcome by the lure of riches, the scent of power, and desire--for young Hugh (the one who burnt the nuns to death: abbey-burning was a Tudor sport). Before long, Alys, living comfortably if restlessly at the castle, begs Morach for a bit of magic, and three dolls are fashioned, resembling lords old and young as well as the young Hugh's unpleasant fat wife, Lady Catherine. Even Morach is not able to forecast the horror to come- -though at one point she will save Lady Catherine from drowning in the moat (from a castle outlook, Alys ``started humming...like a swarm of toxic bees''). And who could guess that those little dolls were made for walking? Buoyed by eerie successes, Alys betrays those who loved her to terrible deaths--and climbs upward to the inevitable fall. Told with the dark energy of Wideacre, a fem/lib screw-turn or two, messy magic, and a certain mean glee: a chilly period entertainment. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Compelling Story, Potentially Offensive Material
By Ana Mardoll
The Wise Woman / 1-4165-9088-9
This is now my fifth Philippa Gregory novel I've read, and the fourth I've reviewed, and I cannot understand how Gregory can be so radically different with each novel, in terms of prose, technique, and sheer quality. "The Constant Princess" was wonderful - crisp, clean prose, with a little bit of didactic dialogue, but it fit Catherine's character perfectly. "The Other Boleyn Girl" was terrible history, but a decent fictional story, even if Gregory did rely a little too heavily on virgin/whore stereotypes, and even if she deliberately reduced her heroine into an idiot in order that everything could be explained to her in dialogue. "Earthly Joys" was so painfully boring that I simply could not finish it, and "The Virgin's Lover" was just awful, with characters' motivations just told to us in hurried prose, rather than shown to us properly in actual actions and dialogues. And now we have "The Wise Woman".
The writing in "The Wise Woman" is simply wonderful. The plot and the characters are so compelling because Gregory skillfully takes every stereotype and shortcut in a writer's manual, and turns each one on its head. The entire cast of stock characters are here: the Reformed Rapist Lover, the Bitter Barren Wife, the Kind Supportive Old Father, the Cruel Uncaring Hag, the Sweet Understanding Foster Mother. And just when we realize that we're dealing with historical romance stereotypical characters, and figure that we know the outcome of the story, Gregory chooses that moment to show the ridiculousness of the stereotypes and the reality of her own characters.
"The Wise Woman" does not have a happy story to tell. Entitled, rapist nobles do not reform into loving husbands. Bitter, barren wives have good reasons to be bitter. Noble fathers who seem kind to simple peasant girls have very different standards when it comes to marriage eligibility. Evil hags can still contain a kernel of kindness, and the nicest mothers are capable of cutting judgment and prejudice. Because these characters are so real, the plot is unpredictably bleak and shocking. Gregory seems to be asking the reader: Did you really think a lifetime of rape can be washed away by a pretty face? Did you really think that a lifetime of plotting and calculations would be abandoned simply because an old man is fond of a young girl? Did you really expect a happy ending?
Refreshingly, our heroine is also allowed to be a real person. She isn't a Virtuous Heroine, who will win marriage because of her pure heart. She's not a Schemer, destined for greatness because of her clever political wrangling. And she's not an Anti-Heroine, determined to tear down her tormentors at the cost of her own life. No, she simply is a real girl, full of the same virtues, vices, hopes, fears, angers, and loves. Gregory doesn't pass judgment on her character; we're not expected to see her as greedy for wanting a warm castle over a dirty hovel, and we're not expected to judge her for her actions, even as she becomes increasingly desperate and spirals into madness. For the characterization alone, I would give "The Wise Woman" five stars, and would point it out as an example of how to do a historical romance right.
However, there's a big caveat to all this before you rush right out to buy this book. There's a lot of material here that many people will find very objectionable. Of the many graphic sex scenes in this book, they all involve extreme violence, rape, forced drug use, or forced group sex. The scenes are often necessary to propel the plot, but they are certainly disturbing and will turn off a lot of readers. I wasn't offended by the scenes, but I did feel a little queasy after many of them - this isn't light reading material.
Secondly, Gregory has decided to make magic a real force in "The Wise Woman", and some of this magic could be disturbing or offensive to some readers. I think, in retrospect, that I would have enjoyed the novel more if there was a possibility that the "magic" was all in the heroine's mind as an indication of her spiraling insanity. As it is, Gregory makes it pretty clear that the magic our heroine works and suffers from is completely real, and not a hallucination. I would have preferred a little more subtlety.
The only other thing that keeps this from being a five-star book is the ending. I don't have a problem with the ending itself: it's realistic, it's cyclical, and it works. But I do have a problem with the way the ending seems rushed and tacked on, as if Gregory had a page limit to maintain and realized, twenty pages from the end, that - oh no! - she needed to wrap this baby up fast. Her careful, foreshadowing prose gets tossed out the window in favor of a dash to the finish line. The result is an ending that seems technically right, but feels horribly wrong.
Bottom line: If you are offended by graphic, violent sex scenes and/or graphic, violent magic, you will not enjoy this book. If you are a fan of historical romances and you would like to see some common stereotypes followed through to a dark and subversive conclusion, you may enjoy this book as I did. For all its joys, there are better novels out there, but if you are looking for something unusual and different, this is the Gregory novel for you.
~ Ana Mardoll
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Good Plot, Bad Characters, Awful Ending, Altogether... Eh, 2 1/2 Stars
By The Boleyn Girl
I love Philippa Gregory, but this, not so much. Granted, it's one of her earlier books, but I don't understand how such a talented writer suddenly produced this train wreck.
First, let's talk about anti-heroines. I'm a not a huge fan of Gregory's WIDEACRE, but Beatrice Lacey was an excellent anti-heroine. Alys is no Beatrice Lacey, and not, in my opinion, a very effective anti-heroine, either. And unlike Beatrice (or a more famous anti-heroine, Scarlett O'Hara), Alys does not inspire hatred or even deep dislike in the novel's readers, which is what a good anti-heroine should do. Instead, Alys leaves you somewhat irritated and incredulous at her sheer stupidity. The reader can plainly see that her choices throughout the novel do nothing but cause damage to herself, and Alys seems to be completely blind to her own folly. She's not smart, cunning, crafty, shrewd; she's not anything a good anti aspires to be. She's just stupid and greedy and annoying. I don't mind it when main characters are selfish or malicious or spiteful, but I cannot abide annoying characters.
None of the other characters are particularly likable either. Again, I will reference WIDEACRE and say that at least that novel had its share of likable supporting characters. In fact, reading this novel makes me appreciate Wideacre much more than I did before, and you know there's something wrong if WIDEACRE suddenly starts looking good to you. Alys is surrounded by people who are just as off-putting as she is. Lady Catherine is revolting, so pathetic that she's not pitiable (though, in fairness, that might have been Gregory's intent). Hugo is a confusing character, one who seems to be dominant and cruel and powerful at the beginning of the novel, but becomes nothing more than an empty character as the book moves on. Morach was colorful, but, again, as the book wore on, her actions became puzzling as well. Hildebrande was strangely grating, and her pretense of motherly love seemed like some sort of cruel irony to me. Not convincing.
However, the book does have its strong points, as well, because despite these God awful characters, Gregory somehow manages to keep the story interesting. You still find yourself wanting to find out what happens, and THE WISE WOMAN's macabre setting is perfect for horrific suspense. The whole story has a feeling to it that I can't quite explain, something sort of like suffocation, as if the reader is in a claustrophobic space during the entire read. That sounds terrible and depressing, but it's actually a perfect setting for the story. The passages about witchcraft are especially engrossing, and I only wish there was more magic and less Alys in this story. The story's ending is a disappointment, as it leaves some loose ends and is, in general, absurd. I had the sense, even as I was reading the last paragraphs, that the ending was a little too melodramatic for my taste.
If you don't mind being stifled in darkness for a while, and you think you can put up with Alys, rent this novel from your local library if you can (mine didn't have THE WISE WOMAN in stock, or I would have). But the ending will surely disappoint, the characters are unconvincing, and you'll find yourself not really caring what happens to them. THE WISE WOMAN is not a terrible story, but you need a will of steel not to become aggravated with it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I love reading Philippa Gregory - this one certainly did not ...
By Susan C Bernhard
I love reading Philippa Gregory - this one certainly did not disappoint me. Left me intrigued until the last page.
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