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

[JeanneTheRabidFeminist]

I know at least a few of us are reading this, so I figured we could do with a thread. If you're not reading it, it's Tudor historical fiction and it's here. It's marketed as YA, if such things matter to you.

Disclaimer: this is one of my favourite historical periods and (as people on the Wolf Hall threads know) I can bang on about it forever. But I bloody loved this book and am only slightly disappointed I haven't yet found any historical bits to quibble over. I did try quite hard.

Soooo .... I'll just sit here twiddling my thumbs until you all rock up, shall I?

Yes that's true. And so certain - that the good results had come from holding relics etc, just as embedded as a truth as we'd now say it was good care and hygeine

I have never seen Wolf Hall, so I can't comment on that, but you are right about the politics of religion. The fact that Christianity was politicised and there was an enormous power struggle often eclipses (I've been dying to slip that word in somewhere!) the fact that people really did believe, it wasn't just something forced on them.

I thought that was dealt with very well in Five Wounds, especially with the holy relic angle and its perceived power.

I'm really rubbish at reviews of books, but I have to say I loved it. So well written, brilliant characters, it felt very real to me and to someone who knows very little of the history of the time it made me want to go and find out more.

I'd say it was totally appropriate for a 13 year old Imperial.

I am only a few chapters in but am hooked! Really good characterisations

I have read it (thanks for the chance to do that Katharine!) and reviewed it on Goodreads and Amazon. I think it is extremely well written and will get back to this discussion when we can do so without worrying about spoilers.

Would anyone else like to see a sequel?? I would! Come on Katharine, get writing!

I'm really hoping, alex! I want to know what happens to May.

OhGove, I think we can? MNHQ put a spoiler warning in the title for me.

I would like a sequel.

I liked it a lot. I'm conscious the author is reading so don't know if it's cricket fives to mention one or two bits that made me uncomfortable...?

I know she's reading too, but I imagine authors do read their reviews. I think it would be odd if we didn't discuss it properly?

Ok. Spoilers ahoy, the warning has been up long enough!

I loved the history, loved the female characters like the gran and the sister. They were very real to me.

I couldn't square the heroine's commitment to being a nun with her subsequent romantic actions nor, more acutely, her various romantic actions. I can see she would like the son but not how she would suddenly love the father as well, also he was so much older.

I couldn't square the heroine's commitment to being a nun with her subsequent romantic actions nor, more acutely, her various romantic actions. I can see she would like the son but not how she would suddenly love the father as well, also he was so much older.

She'd been locked in a convent though for 10 years, she'd have had no one to fall for previous to this point. As to the varied men she fell for, I think that comes with being 15! I'm not sure we was supposed to be in love with the father though, just see him as someone she could love, and loved as a person.

Hmm. I wonder if the nun thing was commitment, so much as being quite devout and having had this experience of a woman-only space that was so much nicer than her nasty dad? I am quite into the idea of monasteries as good spaces for women, though.

I didn't get the sense she was painted as being devoutly chaste from the outset, 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?

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.