When Irish Eyes are Smiling...

 

Everything seems to be going well.  It is fitting that I read a book about Ireland as we draw closer to Saint Patrick’s Day, and that I’m of Irish descent.

Be warned, there are some *SPOILERS* in this post.

Born in Fire is part of Nora Roberts’s Born In trilogy.  I purchased this book, along with the other two novels Born in Ice and Born in Shame, as one big book under the title Irish Born.  I was intrigued when I saw the beautiful ring with an emerald heart on the cover, and since I’m Irish and these novels involve Ireland I thought it would be an entertaining read.

Born in Fire focuses on Maggie Concannon, a glass blowing artist who lives in County Clare, Ireland. Maggie is extremely close to her father, Tom, who is a big dreamer.  Tom and Maggie’s mother, Maeve, don’t exactly get along making Maggie feel that she should never get married.  Unfortunately, while out on the cliffs with her father, he dies.  Maggie chats with her sister, Brianna, about how her father was a good man.  Their mother comes out, claiming that even though Tom is dead, he’s still making her life a hardship. 

Maggie and her sister then discuss the future.  Brianna wants to turn their home into a bed-and-breakfast because she enjoys having people around.  Maggie just wants to get back to work on her art.

The scene then goes to Dublin, where Rogan Sweeney is dealing with business.  He works at Worldwide Galleries, one of the top international galleries.  He wants to have Maggie belong exclusively to Worldwide and show her work all over the globe.  Rogan then travels out to County Clare to meet Maggie in person.  They discuss Maggie’s work and how Rogan wants to put it on display in the gallery and make Maggie very wealthy.  Maggie isn’t quite sure what to think so she sends him out.

Maggie decides to accept his offer, but only if she can do what she wants to do.  Rogan and Maggie negotiate minor details before Rogan kisses her. 

The novel goes through the unique relationship between Rogan and Maggie.  She meets Rogan’s grandmother, Christine, who knew Maggie’s own grandmother when she lived in County Clare.  Her debut in Dublin is a huge success, and Maggie soon realizes she’s in love with Rogan, and Rogan also comes to the same realization.

Back in Clare, Maggie realizes that she can free her sister from their mother by purchasing a home for her.  That way Brianna can operate her bed and breakfast without their mother in the way.  Maeve isn’t happy about it, and even confesses to Maggie that a boy that Brianna loved was forced away by Maeve so Brianna wouldn’t be married young.

Rogan returns to Maggie, and they make love for the first time.  They travel to Paris for another gallery opening and to Rogan’s villa on the Mediterranean.  Rogan then asks for Maggie to marry him.  Maggie isn’t so sure of this idea, but she says she’ll think about it.

Rogan then meets Maggie’s uncle who is flirting shamelessly with his own grandmother.  He travels off to Rome, while Maggie goes to Dublin finding him gone.  He goes to County Clare to meet Maggie, where she agrees to marry Rogan and be glad to be his.

I really enjoyed this book, because Maggie was so stubborn the whole time about her feelings.  It took the whole novel for her to realize that she could marry because she did fall in love.

This book is just another great example of Nora Roberts’s great talent as an author.  I’ve read a lot of her books lately, and if you’d like to learn more about this book or any others visit Roberts’s website at noraroberts.com.

Next week I’ll continue with the next book in the trilogy – Born in Ice.  Hopefully it will be just as good as the first book!

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll be reading next week!

And I thought it took me awhile to get ready..

I thought it took me awhile to get ready in the mornings, but that’s nothing compared to what a geisha had to do during the 1920s and 1930s.  They were truly dedicated to their art.

I was inspired to re-read this book, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, after watching the movie based on it this past weekend.  Honestly, it is one of the better novels turned into a movie that I’ve seen and I was really impressed that everything I saw in the movie almost was exactly as I pictured it while reading the novel.

Memoirs is the story of Chiyo, a little girl who along with her sister are sold by her parents to places in Kyoto, Japan.  She is very unusual for she has blue-gray eyes instead of the traditional brown.  Chiyo is sold to an okiya, or geisha house while her older sister, Satsu, is sold to what we’d consider a whorehouse.  Chiyo is scared and confused about her new life, but is told that if she does what she is asked, she may someday become a great geisha like the one currently in residence at the Nitta okiya, Hatsumomo.  Chiyo quickly becomes friends with a girl she nicknames Pumpkin, and soon Chiyo is on her way to becoming a geisha when she starts learning the geisha arts at school.

However, Chiyo misses her family terribly.  When learning of her sister’s location nearby in another part of Kyoto, she sneaks out of the okiya to meet Satsu and they make plans of escaping in a few days.  A problem arises when Hatsumomo is found out to have been sneaking a man into the okiya, which is forbidden.  The okiya servants are punished by not being let out of the okiya, seeming to stop Chiyo from leaving.  Chiyo realized she could still meet her sister by sneaking out onto the roof, but Chiyo falls and breaks her arm.  The owners of the okiya, called Granny, Mother, and Auntie are disappointed as this adds even more to the debt that Chiyo has cost them.  Chiyo’s dreams of becoming a geisha are now over.

While running an errand, Chiyo meets the Chairman, who is surrounded by geisha.  Chiyo realizes that in order to become close to him, she needs to become a geisha.  Soon a well-respected geisha, Mameha, stops by the Nitta okiya and tells Mother she wants to have Chiyo become her little sister – meaning Mameha will mentor her.  This comes as a surprise to all because Chiyo was forced to ruin one of Mameha’s kimonos by Hatsumomo a few years earlier.  Mother and Mameha make a wager on how successful Chiyo will become and Mameha realizes that since Mother does not have an heir that she will adopt one of the geisha – Pumpkin, Hatsumomo, or Chiyo – to become the daughter of the okiya.

Soon Chiyo is bonded to Mameha as her younger sister, and is no longer Chiyo, but Sayuri.  Sayuri continues on the path to becoming a full geisha, which is most of the rest of the book.  She entertaines various men, including the Chairman she met all those years before, whom she loves.  Sayuri is even forced to leave Kyoto during and a few years after World War II. 

The real issue here is love.  Geisha it seems can’t love – for it seems to bring them nothing but trouble and sadness.  A prize for many men was to buy a geisha’s mizuage, to be the first person to sleep with a geisha, which Sayuri set the record.  There is also the danna, or patron, of a geisha who pays for the geisha’s expenses.  For many of these men that are danna, geishas are their mistresses. 

I’ll leave it up to you, my readers, to read the content of this book.  It is something hard to explain to someone unless you’ve read it.  Parts of this book are more graphic than I thought, especially relating to an “eel” exploring a woman’s “cave.”  However, this work was partially inspired by the real life of a geisha named Mineko Iwasaki who did live in Kyoto during the 1960s and 1970s.

I would recommend this book, as well as the movie it’s based on.  It is always amazing to me to see how different people’s lives can be, and yet they still feel and love no different from the rest of us.

That’s it for this week.  What’s up for next week’s review?  I’ve got a couple of options but I’m still trying to decide, there’s so many books to choose from!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll hopefully see you next week!

If I Could Time Travel...

I seriously must have some underlying desire to be a medieval maiden, because it’s one of my favorite time periods to read about. I would definitely have liked to live as a noblewoman, but just not be one of Henry VIII’s mistresses.  Who knows what would have happened to me then!

This week I read Secrets of the Tudor Court: Between Two Queens by Kate Emerson.  A lot of the characters used in this story are real, which I found really interesting.

Again a warning, because there is so much going on in this book (it coves a great part of English history), I do give some SPOILERS in this post.

This story focuses on Anne “Nan” Bassett, fourth child of the late Sir Bassett and her mother Honor, who remarried Arthur Plantagenet, uncle to Henry VIII.  Nan has lived in Calais, an English possession in France.  She is sent to be a maid of honor to Queen Jane, Henry’s third wife, who is almost ready to give birth.  However, Jane dies giving birth to Edward, England’s long awaited male heir. 

Nan dreams of marrying a wealthy courtier, but instead has an affair with Ned Corbett, one of her father’s men, and they make love, which she immediately regrets.  Nan and her fellow ladies discuss who will possibly be the next queen and even discuss Henry’s various mistresses, including the late Anne Boleyn’s sister, Mary.  Nan even jokes she would become one, if it would gain her a wealthy husband.  Kate, another maid of honor, however seems to notice something holding Nan back – Nan is pregnant with Ned’s child.  Nan is forced to bribe Kate and a midwife to help hide her condition so she can remain at court, but not telling Ned about his child.

Nan gives birth to a son, who is given to a local shopkeeper and his wife.  She secretly visits him, whom the couple has named Jamie.

Court drama continues, as the new queen, Anna of Cleves, heads to England.  Henry is unsatisfied with Anna, seeing the new queen in person differs greatly from the portrait he was given.  Henry comes to Nan for comfort, and she sleeps with him, hiding the evidence of her not being a virgin while Henry believes he was the first.  Anna of Cleves doesn’t stay long, as her marriage is annulled and she becomes “The king’s sister.”

Ned soon gets involved in drama of his own, taking things to a friend, Sir Stephen Botolph, causing him to be put in the Tower of London.  Nan frees him with bribes, and Ned flees, only to return to London confusing Nan.  They reunite briefly, but Nan says she can never see him again, though she still loves him.

Soon Henry is married again, to another maid of honor, Catherine Howard.  However, Catherine’s indiscretions are soon revealed (she had had many affairs before and during her marriage to Henry) and she is executed.  Nan meanwhile is still being pursued by Wat Hungerford, a young man who first saw her at Edward’s christening and has been in love with Nan all these years. 

Nan becomes close to a returning member of court, sister to one of her fellow maids of honor, Lady Katherine Latimer, formerly Parr.  Katherine’s husband is dying, and she and Nan are both being pursued by Henry to be the next queen.  However, Henry is old, and Nan realizes that it would be better for her if Katherine became queen because of her ability to care for Henry in his old age.  Katherine and Henry soon marry before Henry dies.

We then get an epilogue.  Mary Tudor is now queen, who Nan has served in her household before and after Mary’s coronation.  Nan’s time is now up since she has agreed to marry Wat.  She may not have got the wealth and title she wanted, but realized what was more important that she had given up with Ned – love.

I would recommend this book if you're like me and love anything medieval.  I would also recommend this book if you're interested in the life of the Tudor royal family.  A lot of these characters in the book are based on real people, which I really enjoyed because some of these people I knew nothing about before reading the book.

Kate Emerson has other books written about this time period.  You can view more information about Kate and her novels at http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/

Next week my book will be Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden.  It'll be a re-read but I'm excited because it's one of my favorite books.

Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if you have any recommendations! :)

You know, I've always wondered about her...

Her being Queen Elizabeth.  The idea that she was a virgin makes sense because she was royalty, but I've always wondered what it would've been like if Elizabeth had decided to have children, married or not.

This week I read The Virgin Queen’s Daughter by Ella March Chase.  I stumbled upon it at Target, spending a gift card I got from a relative for my birthday.  What drew my eye was the cover, but what really drew me in was the story.

It starts off with the narrator, Elinor de Lacey, also known as Nell, mentioning in 1565 how she should never have been born. An interesting way to start the novel, but I kept on reading.

Then we go back to 1554.  A young Nell travels with her parents to London where her father meets with a fellow scholar.  Nell is five-year-old girl with bright red hair.  While visiting the Tower of London while Mary Tudor is queen, she has a chance visit with Elizabeth, Mary’s half-sister who has been in prison since Mary has ruled.  Nell is fascinated by Elizabeth, and dreams of serving in Elizabeth’s court in the future.

Chase again skips a few more years again, with Nell, now in 1564, sad due to the death of her father at 15.  Elizabeth is now queen, and has summoned Nell to be her maid of honor at court. 

An interlude chapter takes us back to 1548 with Elizabeth living with Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr and her new husband, Thomas Seymour.  Nell’s mother, Lady Caverly, is one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting at the time, taking care of the pregnant dowager queen.  However, it seems Seymour has eyes for Elizabeth as well and at the end of this chapter, we assume he has slept with her.

Now the similarities between the Queen and Nell seem to come to light.  Could Nell be the Queen’s child?  I don’t want to spoil this book, unlike my last one, because this book is too good to spoil.  Nell’s adventures at court and interactions with Robert Dudley’s (the queen’s favorite) knight, Sir Gabriel, will keep you on the edge of your seat.

I would recommend this book highly.  This is one of my favorite time periods to read fiction about.  I loved The Other Boleyn Girl (the movie), and I’ve always been fascinated with royalty, princesses, and the like.  The drama that goes on at court I think is more interesting than gossiping about celebrities today – because there was something real at stake, a crown.

I think next week I’m going to continue with the Tudors, and read a book by Kate Emerson called Secrets of the Tudor Court: Between Two Queens.  This book is more about Henry VIII and his women so I’m hoping it’ll be good as well.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully you’ll read again next week!