Cecily: An epic feminist retelling of the War of the Roses

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While not every moment is a success, and certainly Cecily feels the pain of her losses deeply, she is conniving, intelligent and always preparing her next move in the war of politics.

In the end, she decides to go to the king to plead for her husband’s life, and if too late for that, for her children’s and her own.Perhaps that’s why my favourite Beatrix Potter was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes (which I reviewed here), and later, I was easily won over to Oscar Wilde by The Importance of Being Earnest (which I reviewed here). The book tells the story of Cecily Neville, the woman who married Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and bore him twelve children, many of whom sadly died in infancy. Cecily is one of those rare novels, written with such poetry that at times you just stop and stare at the words, yet blending the narrative drive of desperate times with a deep insight into the medieval psyche. In conclusion, this author clearly put her heart into this book and it really shows that she wasn’t out to just get a quick buck.

It would also fit in more neatly with how Garthwaite’s Cecily and York view Gloucester after his death. Above all I wanted her reaction to Richard III's usurpation, when her youngest son spreads the rumour that Edward was a bastard. She did just that, completing her novel while studying for a creative writing MA at the University of Warwick. The story is very relatable because it covers her younger years, her marriage to Richard, Duke of York, her happy years with him, their children.She arranges advantageous marriages for her daughters, positions her son to be future king, helps her husband to see the bigger picture and be loved seemingly in any territory. Not once did Garthwaite break out into history textbook dryness - a la Sunne in Splendour - to get the reader understanding what was going on.

Cecily was a pivotal figure being Duchess of York and mother of two kings ( Edward IV and Richard III and grandmother to a third ( Edward V). Here is a story that is both moving and unsentimental and a new type of historical heroine, a character of passion and steel who keeps us at a distance, who knows our rank and our place, who gives us no more than she wishes and leaves us as mere courtiers, waiting on the edge of her attention. Also, she is constantly shown to have underestimated Margaret of Anjou’s strength as early as when we first meet her on her way to become Henry VI’s wife.Having said that, while I was very pleased with this book, some of the foreshadowing made me very very scared that I won’t like the sequel nearly as much.