The Wise Woman, a review by Joanna

The Wise Woman

Philippa Gregory

626 pages

First published by Viking in 1992.

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The Wise Woman is a historical fiction novel set in Tudor England, by bestselling author Philippa Gregory, which was first published in 1992, before she became famous for The Other Boleyn Girl, and all the other historical romances that followed. Gregory was an academic historian exploring female-centric stories before this was the norm. This one, like with the Wideacre trilogy which preceded it is unusual in that the main character is irredeemably awful, and I’m sure that’s why it has so many scathing one and two star reviews. I bought it years ago, when I wanted to read everything she had written, and picked it from my overladen To Read shelf partly so I could move it to my mostly decorative PG collection on the bookshelf. I’m giving it three stars because while I think it’s a good book from an intriguing period in English history, it’s not particularly enjoyable as a story, and it’s too long. I don’t regret reading it though.

In 1540, Henry VIII has tired of Catherine of Aragon and her inability to give him an heir. Deciding that the Catholic Church which prevents him from divorcing must be done away with, he orders the destruction of the country’s monasteries and nunneries, conveniently appropriating their wealth. Alys is a 17 year old orphan who was raised on the Pennine moors by a Wise Woman, Morach, but escaped to a life of relative luxury and comfort inside an abbey, under the protection of the abbess, Hildebrande, who she loves as a mother. When Hugo, the son of the local lord, attacks and burns the abbey, Alys is the only survivor, but unwilling to return to poverty, she finds her way into Hugo’s home as a clerk for his father and assistant to his wife Catherine, using her writing and medical skills to make herself indispensable to them. This security isn’t enough for Alys however – she wants Hugo himself, and having forsaken her faith, she uses the dark arts to to ensnare him, with horrifying consequences…

Like many readers, I loved TOBG when I first read it, and devoured the following books in the Tudor series, even though none came close to matching the magic of Mary Boleyn’s story. I hated Wideacre because the heroine was so selfish and the story so bleak. I wanted happy endings for likeable characters and the baddies to get their comeuppance. I’m older now, and know that fiction, like life, doesn’t always have to work like that to be rewarding. I’d therefore recommend this to people who are not traditional Philippa Gregory fans, but are more interested in feminist history about witchcraft, and are okay with horror, & magical realism blended in. There’s no romance here (although there’s plenty of sex), and the witchcraft is not the kind modern readers are used to, it’s dark, wild and truly creepy, and if you need a happy ending to enjoy a book, look elsewhere. What I did like is that Alys doesn’t start out bad, just self-centred, but her circumstances and the malevolence and greed of those around her warp her into a villain. The writing is atmospheric, but not particularly skilled or “literary” and because it’s all told from Alys’s increasingly deranged perspective, got uncomfortably repetitive. 3.5 rounded down for the excessive length.