I'm a reader who holds grudges. Disappoint me, and it's likely that an author will get cleaned off my shelves and dumped in the donation bin because if I try to read another title by them, the bad experience keeps lingering and trashes the current read. But Philippa Gregory has been the exception.After two rather blah reads (A Respectable Trade and Fallen Skies, the latter which I will certainly re-attempt), this hefty saga was recommended to me by the awesome Sarah, whose similarly awesome review told me that I would most likely love the notorious Wideacre. Incest, depravity, murder, gloomy Gothic dysfunction, and a totally unlikable protagonist/antagonist? Sign me up! Three times was the definite charm with Gregory. I'm hooked, and I will probably one day consider myself a fan. I loved it. This was the first book in a long, long while that I could say had me riveted from first page to the last. I can't think of any dull spots. It was gripping, turgid melodrama with the plot taking twists and turns that had me flipping pages and perched on the edge of my chair.Sorry for using such lame clichés, but it was true. Could Beatrice become any more obsessed and amoral? Who else would fall under her dogged steamroller of psychoses? I had to keep reading and reading, and the ending.... What a grim climax it leaves to the imagination. It's left up to the reader, and their own feelings about Beatrice, as to how that little scene plays out when Beatrice meets her Maker (both the Divine and the Temporal one who started her on her path). It can be as merciful or merciless as one wishes. Do we get more details in the sequel?I hope not, but at the same time I'm dying to know what Gregory thought up for one of the most memorable characters I've ever read.Even though Beatrice is a very loathesome character, I found myself able to see things from her point of view, warped and void of morality as it was. She despises the prospect of being kicked out of her home and her land upon marriage, just because she's not male. Her feckless brother, Harry, has no feel for the earth and true traditions of Wideacre. All he knows, and cares about, are the perks of the position. But for what Wideacre is, Beatrice feels true kinship that becomes a demented fervor.And, like that village so often quoted about, she has to destroy it in order to save it. The process is an inevitable, continual decline over the years. As Beatrice falls, so does Wideacre. Or was that blissful utopia of Nature only beautiful on the surface and it was the one rotten to the core? Was Beatrice the fertile soil that made Wideacre realize its destructive, soul-sucking potential?Throughout the book, Beatrice refers to Wideacre in terms of a living thing, a thing with a heart, a pulse, and a soul that only she can sense and communicate with. It's a symbiotic, parasitic relationship, evoking the best Beatrice has to offer while at the same time consuming it and leaving nothing but the husk of a mad woman with absolutely no scruples or morals.One can be squicked by the incest and never venture into the water, but there is plenty going on under the surface.I loved Gregory's writing. Beatrice's voice is so cold and selfish all the while she insists she's giving up everything, including her soul, for Wideacre. She's a total sociopath, and it really took me by surprise how much I still wanted to read about her when I've wanted to tear books in half because of heroes and heroines that did much, much less. Since the story is told from Beatrice's point of view, we watch her mental gears turn and crash as she frantically justifies her actions to herself and the reader, as her entire world is seen through her twisted little mind.Brilliant and engrossing. Meaty gothic melodrama the way I love it, and I haven't been so absorbed by a dark, demented family since Marilyn Harris' Eden series. Like Beatrice, the anti-hero Thomas Eden and his grandson John Murrey Eden were formed by long aristocratic traditions, a remote and self-contained world, and a desire to control absolutely everyone and everything in their lives. Wideacre is a natural companion piece to Harris' morbid, melodramatic saga.
I've never read any of Ms Gregory's Tudor novels. The Tudor era doesn't particularly interest me (though I'm not opposed to the period if a novel has elements I enjoy), so I was intrigued by this trilogy for three reasons: 1) the Georgian setting; 2) her earlier (supposedly less-romantic) work; 3) the negative reviews due to an antagonistic & incestuous heroine.I agree the incest is gross. It's definitely not the sort that draws a reader's sympathy (like, say, Flowers in the Attic). But once Beatrice's initial romanticism has passed, said incest becomes another facet of her anti-heroine status. She is an unreliable narrator -- and, as such, she is the only choice to relay this kind of story. If Celia was the primary POV, Beatrice would be nothing but a villain...which is unfair, even for a character who does such vile things. Nobody can deny Beatrice impacts, warps, & (frequently) ruins everything around her. But the root of her negativity -- her terrors of homelessness, of lacking security, of leaving her childhood home without a ripple of effect on the land she holds dear -- are sympathetic. She craves knowledge that she is loved, & in that she's a tragic character more than anything else. She's a combination of Victoria & Aurora Floyd & Scarlett O'Hara.So while Beatrice definitely isn't a good person, her villainy has understandable roots. Her defeat is inevitable; in that she's unlike Scarlett O'Hara, who had enough goodness to prevent total downfall. But I'm sad that so many readers don't look past the grotesque plot points & enjoy the heart of the novel -- a sprawling, semi-gothic epic of a twisted family & its relationship with the land. Who is the true parasite -- the family or the land they live upon? It's a romance in the old-fashioned sense -- a tale of warped standards, a la Zofloya -- and that sort of romance doesn't need a moral paragon to narrate. 4.5 stars, but this time I rounded up....Take that, one-star reviews. ;)
What do You think about Wideacre (2003)?
I’m going to disagree with the majority of reviews here and say that I loved the book. I couldn’t put it down so much that I had read over half of it on the first day of purchase. I really liked the style of writing, the way you felt every emotion, good or bad that Beatrice was going through. The incestuous theme seems to have caused quite a stir here but for me the lead up to it was so intense that I found myself rooting for it to happen! Yes Beatrice is evil, and yes she is certainly vile but overall she is a fantastic character and makes Wideacre a definite must read.
—Jem
They should sell T-shirts that say, "I read 'Wideacre' and all I got was this T-shirt and a sense of exhausted nihilism."Some thoughts:* The book could've been shorter by at least a third. There was way too much repetition, both of themes and specific phrases. Too often I found myself thinking, Yes, I GET IT, she loves Wideacre more than anything, they can see the paddock from the house, he has "plump buttocks." YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING ME.* I felt a little worse about myself and the world after every chapter. And not in a good way.* I sensed way too many parallels between the latter half of the book and what's going on with many of our authority figures today. I won't expound so as not to ruin it, but the part of my brain that makes connections between things was working overtime for a while.* I wish it had been more consciously unreliable-narrator. Because the narrator was extremely unreliable, but I got the impression that it was by accident.* Some of the more, um, adult plotlines were just too much for me. TOO. MUCH. And I don't think they served any purpose, which is even more heinous a literary crime. Without them, it might have had a stronger message, AND it could've been sold to young adults. ("Compare and contrast 'Wideacre' and 'Vanity Fair.' On second thought, don't.")* There were some overarching concepts that intrigued me, like the relationship between a woman in a patriarchal society and the land she can't own, and the tension between keeping to the old ways and embracing a changing culture. But I didn't feel like these ideas went anywhere. They just got mired down in the muck that was the rest of the story.* It kept my attention. That's something, I guess.
—Ann
Where I got the book: my local library, because the one that was on my bookshelf disappeared years ago. Ah, Philippa Gregory. One of the most read, and most reviled, of living historical novelists. Brickbats mostly take the form of stabs at her loose writing and her historical inaccuracies, although I can't say much about the latter as I'm no historian and as long as writers get things more or less in the right era, I'm usually OK.I tend towards liking PG's books more than hating them, even thou
—Jane
