Retrato do autor

Francesca Kay

Autor(a) de The Translation of the Bones

6 Works 309 Membros 25 Críticas 2 Favorited

Obras por Francesca Kay

The Translation of the Bones (2011) 127 exemplares
An Equal Stillness (2009) 124 exemplares
The Long Room (2016) 49 exemplares
The Book of Days (2024) 6 exemplares
One Busy Book (2004) 2 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome canónico
Kay, Francesca
Data de nascimento
1957-08-27
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
UK
Locais de residência
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Educação
Oxford University (English)

Membros

Críticas

The Book of Days is fabulous historical fiction. The start of the book is quite slow, and reading on my kindle, I did not become fully engaged with the novel until about the 50 % mark. But once I did, I could not put the book down.

In a village, north of Oxford , 1546 , the tale begins to unfold. Alice is a young woman , married to a much older man, Richard, who is very ill and is dying. Alice would very much like to have a child. Richard's first wife died, and left behind a now teen aged daughter, Agnes. Richard is obsessed with building a chapel where he plans to be buried, and prayers said for his soul. Alice has already lost a 3 day old baby, and mourns her loss.

Though not specifically mentioned, the Protestant Reformation has begun. The Catholic Chapel where Squire Richard and his family and the town worship, is threatened. A commissioner arrives, and the chapel is to dismantle all things Catholic. Meanwhile, daughter Agnes grows restive, and becomes interested in a man named Henry Martyn. When Richard dies, his manor and fortune will go to Agnes, unless a male heir is born. Alice wonders what will become of her when her husband dies.

Many of the townspeople begin to follow a firebrand Protestant preacher, and turmoil and tragedy result.

A fascinating tale from a very personal perspective, but one that has made me seek out more information on the Protestant Reformation, and the reign of King Henry V111

A couple of quotes

48% " I have been a man's possession since the day I was born" - Alice.
55% " was it right to liberate a church from Rome to enslave it to another throne ? "
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
vancouverdeb | 1 outra crítica | Feb 24, 2024 |
Married to a much older husband, Alice wants to have children but her husband is dying. His will stipulates that all will go to his daughter Agnes, flush with her first love, unless Alice bears a son. As her husband ails, he commissions a fine chantry chapel in the local church, his tomb is carved and a priest arrives to sing. However the locals on the estate are not happy about this and change is afoot, the old king is dead and the new one wants a different form of religious practice.
It was quite hard to get into this book, there are few names used in early chapters and the date is really given until later. Luckily I have a fair bit of knowledge and could use the hints about wider events to place this story. I'm glad I persevered as this is a wonderfully understated bit of writing. There are tumultuous events taken place as the Protestant reformation takes place and this book reflects on how it must have felt in the heart of the countryside.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
pluckedhighbrow | 1 outra crítica | Feb 12, 2024 |
If you have read more than one review on my blog, you may have noticed I have a thing for the publishing company Tin House. I have found almost all of the books I have read published by them intriguing to say the least. They have topics that are worth discussing and make one think.

The Long Room by Francesca Kay is no different. This is a book that can be discussed, taken apart, examined, and I still think there will be things to be found in it. While I will admit that at times it was a bit slow, the overall premise is what pulled me in.

Stephen is a listener in the 80s. His job is to listen to conversations that have been recorded in people's houses to listen for any talk of espionage. His subjects always have code names to keep from allowing bias.

Stephen is also routine oriented. He has his days planned out he does the same thing day in and day out, and he is a loner.

One day, he gets an assignment to listen to a husband and wife, yet he can only hear the day time portion and not the night time portion. The more he listens, the more he starts to connect with the wife Helen. He becomes so connected, he starts creating a narrative for this couple that may or may not be true. His curiosity becomes obsession and he starts to do things he would not normally do. How far will Stephen take it?

As stated above, Tin House has a way of publishing books that make people think. The whole time reading Kay's book, I kept wondering about conversations, people I knew, and how much I really knew about them. Stephen is in a place where he only gets a piece of the whole, yet creates a whole dialog which is a tiny bit based on truth, but mostly upon his own read into things. At one point, he dismisses a portion of dialog because it didn't fit his narrative.

I also kept thinking about how people approach politics and the idea of narrative. I don't think Kay chose the 80s without reason. It was a time of line drawing, heavy politics, and the beginning of the major split between conservative and liberal. It was the beginning of the political narrative that was taking place in London as well as the US.

What is truth and what is fiction, when you only hear one piece of the story?

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this one, but as stated, it is slower than most of their books. This is a simmer book rather than a boil book. It takes time, but once Stephen's world starts to become unraveled, it takes off.

I gave this one 4 stars.

*I want to thank Tin House publishing for the ARC of the book. It was given with the intent of receiving an honest review*
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Nerdyrev1 | 1 outra crítica | Nov 23, 2022 |
I'm in the habit of reading something from the non-fiction shelves during the day, and a novel at night, and so when memory stirred as I was reading Stella Bowen's autobiography Drawn from Life, I hunted out Francesca Kay's An Equal Stillness from the TBR. This novel explores the same dilemma in fiction that featured in real life in the Sensational Snippet that I posted from Bowen's book. As the bookcover blurb says: Artist, lover, wife, mother: can one woman be them all? To be more specific, how do women reconcile being a loving, supportive spouse with the need to advance their own careers, especially if they have a special gift?

An Equal Stillness is a novel but it reads like an intimate biography, charting an artist's professional and personal life from a close perspective. It's clear-eyed and not blind to the subject's faults, but it's gentle and not quite detached. It's not until the very end of the book that the reason for this is revealed, though some readers may guess it beforehand. What they may also not guess is that this is not a fictionalised retelling of a real artist's life... Jennet Mallow is an entirely fictional creation and using the form of a biography is the author's way of making the story convincing.

Jennet was born in England's north, in the fictional village of Litton Kirkdale in the upper valley of the River Aire, to a mother disappointed by life. Lorna wanted to escape her parents, and—this is not quite as cynical as it sounds—she married, fully expecting the man to die on the battlefields of WW1. Her father had died when she was 13, and her brother had died at Ypres. The people she loved had died, and she expected that Richard would die too. But he didn't, and he didn't want to stay in the army despite his family's traditions. He retreats to a quiet, humble life as a cleric, with a wife frustrated by his lack of ambition and their dull domestic life.

Somehow, from this blighted family, Jennet becomes an artist of renown. As a child she made art in a hidden space behind her bed, and untaught, she wins a scholarship to an art school in London in 1945. Thriving in the cultural milieu she marries another artist, David Heaton, older than her and already becoming successful. But before long she gives birth to a son called Ben, and her art takes second place to domestic life. When they go to Spain because they are fed up with dreary postwar England, she—pregnant again—is content with her role:
Those first few months in Santiago stayed in her mind as a time of happiness, and they mark the start of her most fecund periods as an artist.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/05/25/an-equal-stillness-by-francesca-kay/
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
anzlitlovers | 7 outras críticas | May 25, 2020 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
6
Membros
309
Popularidade
#76,232
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
25
ISBN
41
Línguas
3
Marcado como favorito
2

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