Anyone want to talk about Five Wounds with me? (warning: contains spoilers)

Just wanted to pop in again and say thank you for the reviews that have appeared on Amazon/Goodreads/Mumsnet since I last posted, in case any of them are by people on here - thank you very much for your kind words, if so!

Also, just to add, I have a few spare paperback copies now that I can send out to book bloggers/vloggers if anyone knows anyone who might like one - just PM me.

Thanks

It's the intensity of the closed society, too - always makes for good drama!

Ooh, that would be so interesting, Katharine. I would want to read it.

You could write the story of a noble oblate, why she chose that path, or why it was chosen for her, how it compared with her secular life, etc. Great potential!

Yes, Norfolk has endless possibilities

I've sometimes thought it would be interesting to write a boarding school-type story set in a medieval nunnery. Only with great possibilities when noble ladies went to stay in them for a while (as Mary Shelton seems to have done at one point after her affair with the king. She also had a sister who was a nun, apparently).

Ooh, yay, Uncle Norfolk again!

That's a good point about nunneries, as I understand it from various books, if you were of a certain social standing and had enough children, "giving" one to the church was not uncommon.

And you do wonder what Nan's aunt is actually going to do, because she said she'd go back to her father but I'm not sure she could really put up with that

Maybe we should find out in the sequel!

it's more that of the two lives she knows, it's the one she finds preferable - the nunnery represents escape from overbearing male authority rather than an actual vocation.

Yes, and this is really clear from the book. The abuse she's suffered at the hands of her father and grandfather, compared to the gentle and kind treatment she received from her aunt the Abbess..., well, I know which I'd have preferred! The wrench when the convent was shut down by the commissioners for her and all the other women there must have been awful, even with the small stipend they received.

Hello, I just wanted to namechange briefly and pop in and say thank you to everyone for this lovely thread! Also, reviews keep popping up on Amazon, Goodreads and Mumsnet books by people I don't recognise, so I wanted to post here to say thank you for the wonderful reviews, in case any of them are by people on here. It feels pretty incredible that people are actually READING my book, let alone enjoying it

Re the points about motivation and Nan's rapid changes of focus, I have taken this on board. For me this was about how it felt to be a teen - being utterly consumed by one person or thing that can suddenly shift to someone else - but I could definitely have done things to make it more believable, so I will bear this in mind for future books.

The privacy issue is an interesting one too. There's a fabulous (but expensive) book, Locating Privacy In Tudor London, that talks about differences in how privacy was perceived and attained when people lived a much more communal life. (I tend to imagine Francis habitually bribing servants when he wanted things kept from his father, though.)

Very interesting to hear the stories about real-life nuns! For what it's worth, I don't think being a nun would have suited Nan at all - it's more that of the two lives she knows, it's the one she finds preferable - the nunnery represents escape from overbearing male authority rather than an actual vocation.

Re the sequel, it's underway, but I have to finish the next book (not about Nan, but about Norfolk's daughter, Mary Howard) next! There is definitely a grandmother-related backstory that I want to write, too, but that is a little way down the line.

Thanks again for reading my book

The grandmother was wonderful.

I really liked the fact that the people in the book were still clinging to the old religion, it was horribly jarring for people when the abbeys closed, they had been the main source of what we would now call welfare, and it really wasn't replaced. The old religion had also provided the tempo of the day and the year.

I really enjoyed the book, the era fascinates me and I think was really well described. Nan's affair was also believable, when one considers that most of life was lived with an audience, especially in noble households, there was almost no privacy as we understand it.

I read this last week and really enjoyed it. I thought the swing from being a nun to getting all swoony was mostly just being a teenager and her own circumstances. After Lord Middleham died, I thought she was so bereft that she wasn't able to withstand Francis. Anyway, very glad I bought it and good to hear that the historical stuff stands up.

I don't think people had quite the same sense of public and private space, though. We automatically think of affairs being clandestine, but that is partly because we live in houses where there are private rooms, and locks, and where we can expect to keep things hidden. I think that must make a difference?

Alex- I just found it incongruous that Nan, who has been convent-educated, should allow her conduct with Francis to be so open, brazen in fact. They are very familiar with each other in front of his family and the servants. I thought she would show more modesty. She must have known how it would look to the daughters to see their father's betrothed consorting with his son but she seemed to have cast aside any scruples in favour of enjoying her 'affair' with Francis.

I was at school with a boy whose parents had been a monk and a nun, respectively. They met after they left the church though, as far as I recall.

Just to throw in a real life element here.

My mother joined a convent at 17 when she left school. She had wanted to for a long time. While she was there, by all accounts she was very focussed on her vocation, very devoted. She stayed there for about 5 years, although never took final vows.

But one day, something in her changed, and it really was very sudden. People who knew her at the time say that it was like a switch had been flipped. And she left the convent.

Within a year she had met and married my father and was pregnant with my elder brother.

So it does happen.

Re Nan's relationship with Francis: apart from the grief and mixed feelings, don't forget she was only 15 and this was her first real experience of a romantic relationship.

I too felt that Nan swung very quickly away from the idea of being a nun once she became attracted to Francis. I reasoned that was a 15 year old realising her power over men and unsure what to do with it. I did judge her badly when, after her 'husband's' death, she immediately took up with his son and in such a flagrant fashion. Katherine did tell me that she intended Nan's strange behaviour here to portray her grief over the death of Lord Middleham. Maybe it could have been emphasised more for those of us who don't pick up on the nuances. I would love a sequel.

I've read it and I thought it was excellent. And I definitely would like to know what happens to May next. I felt quite nostalgic for my time up in N Yorks and visiting all those wonderful old ruined abbeys and monasteries.

Noooo! I don't want a French sequel! I want it in England, possibly with some trips to Wales and Scotland!

She's given up on being a nun, so there is no reason to flee the country.

I've read it too (but haven't got round to posting a review yet - sorry Katharine. I will write one this week).

I really enjoyed most of the book. Although the ending did seem to appear very abruptly, and I wanted to know more of May's story.

It would. I could quite fancy a dashing French sequel.

I wonder if nuns were moving to the continent at this point? Does anyone know? I know they did later, but I have the impression (based on very little) that at this time people would still be thinking it couldn't 'really' be dissolution for everyone?

Oh I have no idea, it just seemed a very sensible option to me and would set the scene for the sequel nicely I assumed it would seem pretty hopeless for nuns at that point.

On that note, I really liked the bit where she hears people saying how corrupt her own monastery was, and how the abbess had a daughter she pretended was her niece, and everyone's shown nodding and believing it.

Yes, I think it would be counted as incest, or at least dodgy enough to be very worrying.

fert - see, this is why we need another book!

I wonder if nuns were moving to the continent at this point? Does anyone know? I know they did later, but I have the impression (based on very little) that at this time people would still be thinking it couldn't 'really' be dissolution for everyone?

but more than the monastery is a life she can see herself living, with options to be a certain kind of person like her aunt?

I was kind of hoping through out that she'd not actually end up with any man and go live in the forest working as a midwife or move away to the continent to live as a nun. Not sure how historically accurate those endings would have been though. It's a mark of a good book when you feel the author got the ending "wrong" because you think you know the characters so well

As she was betrothed to the father wasn't being with the son a kind of incest?