I loved how this format gave the young heroine a big voice. This novel introduces us to Elizabeth I, daughter of the infamous Henry VIII and his scandalous 2nd wife Anne Boleyn. And through Elizabeth’s diary, we learn that she’s just like any girl in any century, longing for the love and approval of her father. This peeling back of layers to reveal a real person (where used to be only a printed name in a textbook followed by a few carefully chosen facts and dates) reminds me of Philippa Gregory’s work. I say all the time that if her books were in print when I was in high school, I’d have been a much better history student!
So for either – or both – series of books, what is it that so handily captures readers? Is it the writing? The girls’ voices? The female perspective?
Or could it be the food?
Okay, it’s not the food if we’re talking appeal, because, well, historic food is historically disgusting. In Anne’s case, her father’s favorites are goose, swan, rabbit, lamb, quail and lamprey eel. Blech. I have no idea if they sent royal fisherman to catch the eels in the wild or if they just hauled the suckers up out of the moat – not that it matters – but that eel actually lost to the swan in my grossest delicacy ranking when I read that they turned the swan’s neck into pudding. It’s just too much for my 21st century American stomach to handle.
Of course it gives me greater respect for Anne and her half-sister Mary and all the other women for whom such bad food was just the cherry on top of the sundae of crap dumped on them by the ruling men. Women were treated and traded like cattle – exquisitely, prize-winning cattle – with no choices socially, academically, and even gastronomically. Sadly, the meals are just one of many details of court life that leave a bad taste in our mouths, yet the stories of Anne and her peers make us hungrily read on.
“Swan Dive”
Just under the wire on this one!
Swing on by and check out my partners in crime here.
Today's guest comes to us from the wilds of Alaska and back again. Katherine Holmes makes a stop on her blog tour with some background info on her novel The Swan Bonnet.
We tend to absorb the history of our environment As it was for many, Alaska was romantic to me as a frontier, romantic while living in the city. Of a sudden someone would leave Minneapolis for Alaska. My brother went there to do legal work after he had worked with Indian Legal Aid in Duluth While he was on the south coast, I thought of moving. I read up on the state and became caught up in its history. The near extinction of swans in the United States had me thinking about settings and soon I was planning a story.
Learning about Alaska was like learning grammar through a foreign language. I've never read a history book about Minnesota though I have Midwestern ancestry going back to the mid-1800s. Mining hopes in Alaska were very similar to those on Minnesota's Iron Range in the early 20th century. The influx of people in Northern Minnesota had similarities to Alaska’s new population. Sometimes they were the same people. Like Alaska, the fur trade began Minnesota history. I'd heard much about the 1920s on the Iron Range from my mother. Boomtowns and sudden wealth mapped the region.
After being fascinated with two books of Alaskan history, I researched swans. I read how warehouses with thousands of swan pelts were discovered, more than 10,000 at a time. Eventually hunting laws were enforced and a successful environmental chronicle was documented. I began my Alaska story as a shorter fiction about an Irish immigrant couple who bought shore property where swans migrated. But soon the story led to a coastal town and characters emerged.
When I thought of the swans being killed in masses, I knew that few women were part of such a money-making venture. How much did women help such an environmental campaign in a lone setting when a particular species were illegal to hunt? It is known how women responded to Prohibition then.
I posted the book at Authonomy.com in 2009 while I began to re-work the historical detail. I was afraid the swan hat would seem far-fetched. But it wasn't historically. The West established its own dress. I actually hadn't seen Chaplin's The Gold Rush and later, when I watched the VHS, the women's fur hats were part of the entertainment.
Not until I was rewriting the book did I realize the inspiration for the swan hat. Of course, it was meant to be the white hat of the western. But I remembered from my grade school years the pheasant pelts one of my brothers brought home after hunting. He hung the pheasant pelts on the wall of his room and then in the basement. These pelts fit neatly on the head so that, with my friends, I wore a pheasant hat - until my mother found out and scared us about lice. There is some kind of method to storytelling after all.
About the author: After stints in publishing and as a reporter, Katherine L. Holmes obtained an M. A. in Writing from the University of Minnesota. Her poems and short stories have been published in many journals. In 2012, her short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was published by Hollywood Books International. She has also published a children’s fantasy, The House in Windward Leaves.
The Swan Bonnet is available in eBook and paperback.
Get it on Kindle here:
Thanks for reading!
By Michelle Rafferty
I’d argue our Black Swan “fever” peaked at Jim Carey’s SNL performance, but we might see a resurgence this weekend at the Oscars. In anticipation I contacted Roland John Wiley, author of Tchaikovsky and Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, for his thoughts on his subject’s recent omnipresence. Turns out, Tchaikovsky hasn’t always been taken seriously in the academic community. Here, Wiley explains the trappings of music snobbery – and why Tchaikovsky’s popularity among the “muggles” is no reason to discount his brilliance. Oh, and, he dishes on the original Swan Lake ballerina. (Dra-ma!)
An even more recent take on Tchaikovsky - Jim Carrey dances "Black Swan" on Saturday Night Live (c) NBC
Me: How do members of the academic community (like yourself) feel about Tchaikovsky’s resonance in popular culture?
Wiley: I may be different from most ‘members of the academic community.’ Not only does Tchaikovsky’s music speak to me, I also find the conceptual and technical aspects of it operating at a very high level. He was a very fine composer, an assessment that my academic colleagues increasingly acknowledge. Were we to go back 40-50 years, especially in light of the fashion then for early music and the influence of German musicologists who emigrated to this country after World War II (without which our musicology would be much the poorer), we would find a distinctive aloofness about Tchaikovsky in academic circles, which I sensed myself as a graduate student.
Me: Is his popularity with the general public what makes him taken less seriously in academia (sort of the way an indie band loses credibility when it becomes popular)?
Wiley: In a word, yes. But this is changing with the flourishing of popular studies in academia, which are having the effect of implying that so-called serious music is elitist.
Me: And are we (the general public) misusing or misconceiving his work in any way? For example, is a film like Black Swan blasphemous to a true Tchaikovsky fan, like yourself? And what does the academy say?
Wiley: I sense no misconception in the public acceptance of Tchaikovsky, but the need for fairness in distinguishing a truthful aversion to his music from a purely snobbish one. The misconception is that it’s correct to persist in the latter. I don’t think academia as a corporate entity has an opinion about Black Swan. To me it seems, like any other artwork, the product of its creators’ fantasy, and as such owes nothing to the mundane truth.
Me: Black Swan is all about the behind the scenes rivalries. What about the original Swan Lake
This is what I was working on in my last post - little paper swans with movable wings! Oh, these were fun to make and very satisfying.
It has been years (literally) since I played with gouache paint and I was quickly reminded how tricky of a medium it can be. It doesn’t seem like it would be but I had gotten so used to painting with watercolor that applying paint in this fashion felt a little uncomfortable. But you know what they say about discomfort and growth!
Anyway, do they look familiar? I based the design off of my Leda the Swan (sewing pattern). I really love vintage-style soft things and characters and I tried to capture that in this paper birds with their thick lashes, simple design and sparkly-ness. (Isn’t glitter the best thing ever?) After I took these photos I punched holes at the top and added some gold thread so that I may hang them up.
They like to hang out (ha!) with Peter Rabbit, for now. I might need to make a flock of these, yes? That’s a distinct possibility. And once I got started making these swans, I thought such things might find themselves quite at home in le shop.
Hee hee, can’t you tell I had fun taking pictures of these?
A lovely Tuesday to you!
It’s rare that I get to share works in progress with you; I don’t usually think to snap pictures while creating new things. And in the past month or so, for one reason or another, I haven’t been up to a lot art-making. But recently I started to play around with some ideas I’ve been wanting to get to for a while and I think that creative spark has been reignited!
Oh, and thank you for the comments of kind words and things lately. I have been a little behind in my blog-reading and replies but I think of you often. Have a lovely mid-week!
A bit quiet on the blog lately, due chiefly to a pressing book deadline. I'm indoors sweating over a drawing board rather than under the summer sun, but almost done now, I'll post images when it's all handed in.
Nevertheless, much as I yearn for London, there's much around here to count blessings for .
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Hysterical! The bill around the breathing apparatus is funny.
very cute, has he got flippers on his flippers?
…and it’s adorable!
It’s adorable:)
This made me laugh — the wings coming out of the wet suit! Ha!
Very cute!
oh…so this is the way that swans can go underwater!!
Thanks, Kathryn! That area gave me a little trouble, but I persevered! Glad you liked it!
Thanks Jacqui! I know! A bit redundant, but he was feeling a bit uncertain, being his first dive, hee hee.
So, so cute!!
Thanks!
Thanks!
Hee hee, thanks! Glad you liked that. It made me giggle when I was drawing it!
Thanks, Madre!
Little known fact, Susanna, hee hee!