The Other Boleyn Girl

By: Philippa Gregory

Publisher: Harper

Paperback – 627 pages

The novels starts in 1521 England and features the life of Mary Boleyn, who as a young married girl of fourteen serves at the Court of Henry the VIII.

By using present tense and mostly Mary’s POV the writers sets us into the timeframe,  describes life at Court and lets us meet her older sister Anne and her brother George. The three of them are thrown together, because their very unsympathetic family’s only goal in life is to find a way to better themselves. This, at the cost of others - even their own family members.
Mary, a girl in medieval England was a nobody; she had to obey her parents/ powerful uncle, even though she was married and he told her to become King Henry’s whore and give him a child.
 

Using historical facts, blended with fictional accounts, Philippa shows us the corruption in Henry’s court and the way he discards Queen Katherine of Aragon. She only gave Henry a daughter – Mary and now has become too old to bear a much longed for son. King Henry gradually becomes a law unto himself, and is elevated like a god.
 

After Mary Boleyn has given the king two children (a boy and a girl), her uncle tells her she has served her duty, and now has to make way for her older sister Anne. She will have to further the family’s ambitions of power and wealth.

Mary begins to see that life outside the Court is the only way to stay alive, but even though she tries to live a quiet life with her children in her family’s house in Kent, her sister orders her back to Court. With all the intrigue and plotting going on, Anne knows the only people she can trust are Mary and her brother George, who is trapped in a very unhappy marriage with Jane Boleyn, now Lady Rochford.

King Henry is unable to marry Anne because he still is legally bound to Queen Katherine of Aragon, but that doesn’t stop him from getting Anne pregnant. However, she too can only give him another girl – Elizabeth.

The power struggle between the Boleyn and Seymour families eventually leads to Anne’s downfall. She and her brother are accused of treason, (often used by Henry to get rid of unwanted, often innocent people) and thanks to the witness statement of Lady Rochford, both are beheaded in the Tower of London on the day King Henry marries his next wife – Jane Seymour.

The author’s note at the end of the book tells us the historical happy outcome for Mary. She married a man she loved, making her truly THE other Boleyn girl – the one who made the wisest decision and in doing so, was the only one who died of old age.

Philippa has a BA history degree and a PhD in 18th-century literature. After her first novel, Wideacre became a bestseller she became a full-time writer.
Philippa has become a pioneer of a new genre: fictional biography - the story of a real person brought to life with painstaking research.
  
The Other Boleyn Girl became a bestseller that won several awards and was adapted for the BBC as a television drama and a major film. A great novel for history lovers of this time period!

Philippa’s website with video clips, interviews and information on her latest book: http://www.philippagregory.com/