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A Novel
by Jo Harkin
Book Reviewed by:A sweeping historical novel in the vein of Hilary Mantel and Maggie O'Farrell set during the time of the Tudors' ascent. The Pretender tells the story of Lambert Simnel, who was raised in obscurity as a peasant boy to protect his safety, believed to be the heir to the throne occupied by Richard III, and briefly crowned, at the age of ten, as King Edward VI, one of the last of the Plantagenets.
In 1480 John Collan's greatest anxiety is how to circumvent the village's devil goat on his way to collect water. But the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends his life forever: John is not John Collan, not the son of Will Collan but the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence, and has been hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown—and because Richard III has a habit of disappearing his nephews. Removed from his humble origins, sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne's rightful heir, John is put into play by his masters, learning the rules of etiquette in Burgundy and the machinations of the court in Ireland, where he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed and manipulative daughter of his Irish patrons, a girl imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Joan has two paths available her—marry or become a nun. Lambert's choices are similarly stark: he will either become king or die in battle. Together they form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.
Inspired by a footnote to history—the true story of the little-known Simnel, who was a figurehead of the 1487 Yorkist rebellion and ended up working as a spy in the court of King Henry VII—The Pretender is historical fiction at its finest, a gripping, exuberant, rollicking portrait of British monarchy and life within the court, with a cast of unforgettable heroes and villains drawn from fifteenth-century England. A masterful new work from a major new author.
After 500 years, Tudor history has every right to be stale. Its cut-throat court politics have been hashed and rehashed by novelists, poets, and playwrights since Henry VIII was still picking wives. So it's always worth sitting up and taking note when a writer arrives who can inject the genre with a little life—and Jo Harkin, author of Tell Me an Ending, is definitely one such writer. Her brilliant and inventive new novel, The Pretender, tells the extraordinary story of Lambert Simnel, a footnote of history who could have been king. This is above all a brilliantly funny book. Harkin always plays on the border of outright farce, but never stumbles into the wrong territory. Indeed, her novel has more than a passing debt to Monty Python's The Life of Brian, with John spending a great deal of his time trying to convince his supporters that it really would be best for everyone if he just gave up this whole "being king" business. So much of the novel's humor comes too from its dialogue, which gloriously celebrates a particularly medieval kind of bawdiness. Anyone familiar with The Canterbury Tales will know that there was more to the Middle Ages than tonsured monks leafing through prayerbooks, and The Pretender rejoices in degrees of smut that make modern profanity seem pitifully poor in comparison...continued
Full Review
(776 words)
(Reviewed by Alex Russell).
In Jo Harkin's new novel The Pretender, Lambert Simnel—a long-shot hopeful for the English throne—is taken to raise an army in the English Pale in Ireland, the last Tudor stronghold on the island. A small area encompassing the counties around Dublin, the Pale is intimately tied to the history of Ireland and the beginnings of the country's fraught relationship with its neighbors to the east.
English encroachment onto the territory of Ireland began with the Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169, after Henry II had been given papal dispensation to bring the practices of the Irish church into line with Rome. Although the English forces quickly conquered much of the south and east of the island and set up the "Lordship of ...
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Karen Russell, author of The Antidote
What Jo Harkin has accomplished in The Pretender left me awestruck on every page. I had no idea that a medieval historical novel could be this wickedly funny, this timely and timeless. A work of genius, a wellspring of laughter and sorrow, a feat of time-travel, and a feast of language.
