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    A Secret Alchemy: A Novel
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    A Secret Alchemy: A Novel
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    A Secret Alchemy: A Novel
    Ebook447 pages7 hours

    A Secret Alchemy: A Novel

    By Emma Darwin

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The cruel fate of the Princes in the Tower is one of the most fascinating—and most troubling—of all England's historical murder mysteries. But what was the truth behind the deaths of the young Edward V and his brother, Dickon, taken from their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, King Edward IV's beautiful widow, and their guardian, Anthony Woodville? And what about the man who would become King Richard III?

    In a brilliant feat of historical daring, the acclaimed author of The Mathematics of Love reimagines the tragedy of the youngest victims of the Wars of the Roses. Through the voices of Elizabeth, Anthony, and Una—a historian who herself knows grief, betrayal, and secret love—Emma Darwin re-creates the lethal power struggles into which the boys were born, their heart-wrenching imprisonment, and the ultimate betrayal of their innocence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 2, 2009
    ISBN9780061882210
    Unavailable
    A Secret Alchemy: A Novel
    Author

    Emma Darwin

    Emma Darwin studied drama and theatre arts at Birmingham University and then worked in academic publishing before turning to photography and writing. A great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma Wedgwood, Emma now lives in London with her two children. The author of The Mathematics of Love, she is finishing a Ph.D. in creative writing at Goldsmiths College.

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    Reviews for A Secret Alchemy

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    • 3/5
      3.5 stars

      I really liked the portrayal of both Elizabeth and Antony. They’re both usually the villains and power-greedy people and it was refreshing to see them in another light. Antony’s story begins when he is taken to Pontefract Castle and knows he is being executed there. Elizabeth is in Bermondsey Abbey where she lived during Henry VII’s reign. We don’t hear the whole life story of either but few selected episodes. I have to confess I’m not usually huge fan of Antony but couldn’t resist falling for him just a bit.

      I didn’t care for the present day story that much and could have lived without it. Also I had problem with too many narrative switches.. One minute it’s Una telling her story, then the next Antony is about to die and then it switches to a scene where he’s on a horse riding somewhere. So confusing!
    • 3/5
      I loved 'Mathematics of Love' so maybe my hopes were a bit too high for this. I didn't find the modern story very interesting and the whole Wars of the Roses part was a bit too condensed / confusing as well. There's much of interest and I think she writes very well, but this didn't really work for me.
    • 3/5
      The historical portion of the novel, concerning Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV, is interesting and intriguing -- but the modern portion, revolving around a woman named Una, is so flat and uninspiring that it ruined the book. The reprinted paperback also has an incongruous modern cover. Overall a disappointment; read the historical parts and skip Una's.
    • 5/5
      Summary: In A Secret Alchemy, Emma Darwin gives us a new look at the War of the Roses, through the eyes of people who have been frequently cast in the role of villain. The Woodvilles were a powerful family of nobles who became entwined in the political struggles of the day. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, was a beautiful widow when she caught the eye of King Edward IV, and became the Queen of England and mother of the two Princes in the Tower, whose fate remains one of the most-debated mysteries in British history. Her brother, Anthony, was an influential figure in his own right, guardian and surrogate father to his nephew Edward V, crusader and courtier, and the first author published on the first printing press in England. Elizabeth and Anthony's stories are interwoven with the modern-day story of Una Pryor, a bibliographer and historian who is studying the Woodvilles, and who, in returning to England to deal with the remains of the family business, must face her own history of grief and loss.Review: I know I use the word "absorbing" a lot, but it's one of the highest praises I can give a novel, and in this case, it's particularly apt. A Secret Alchemy was absolutely absorbing: once I was into the story, I was lost to the real world, completely surrounded by the tale Darwin was spinning. However, in this book's case, this was a bit of a double-edged sword... while it was remarkably easy to stay absorbed in the story, it was not so easy to get absorbed in the first place. This was not a book I could pick up, read a few pages, put it down, go start dinner, pick it up, read a few pages, put it down, go get the laundry out of the dryer, etc. Instead, it required me to set aside large blocks of reading time in which I could really get immersed - but the good news is that it was good enough that I wanted to find the time to give it the attention it deserved.Darwin (and yes, she's a descendant of that Darwin) is a talented wordsmith, effortlessly slipping between first-person voices, crafting believable, rounded characters, vividly drawing scenes both past and present, and doing it all with utterly beautiful language: writing that feels warm and substantial and serious but not ponderous, turns of phrase so evocative they made me shiver. She's also very good at making historical figures live as individuals, while maintaining a balance with the wider political forces that give them context, and the significance of their places in history. That was one of my favorite things about this book: history just oozes out of its pages, even in the sections set in modern times, and I loved the sense of history pervading everywhere we go and everything we do. I did have to brush up on my actual history - I've read Richard III and Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time (albeit very long ago), but my actual working knowledge of the War of the Roses is pretty slim, and needed refreshing... thank goodness for Wikipedia! I also really, really appreciated the extensive family trees given at the front of the book, and I referred to it at least once every few pages. I do wish there'd been a map of the important places included as well, for those of us not particularly familiar with British geography... but then I'd probably have been flipping back and forth to the front of the book every paragraph instead of every page.There were two things about this book that I wish had been different. First, I am a big fan of parallel storylines in the present and the past - it's one of my favorite story devices. However, in this case, Una's storyline didn't overlap enough with the historical fiction for my tastes. There were certainly similar themes running through both stories, but there weren't any direct connections between the two until practically the last chapter. Both storylines were interesting in their own right, but it got a little frustrating to be constantly looking for links that just never appeared.Second, and on the theme of "looking for things that never appeared", I am not crazy about the title. Barring the possibility that "A Secret Alchemy" is a reference or allusion that I'm just not getting (which is entirely likely), I don't think it's particularly descriptive of what's in the book. You could certainly make the case that the story is a series of alchemical metaphors (although, since alchemy is concerned at its heart with change, you can make alchemical metaphors about most stories), but they're not really made explicit within the text itself... nor does the actual practice of alchemy feature in more than one brief scene.Overall, though, I can't knock this book too much for things that weren't there, when what was there was so absorbing, interesting, well-written, and utterly enjoyable. 4.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Definitely recommended for historical fiction fans, especially those who (like me) enjoy books based around British royalty but who are burnt out on the Tudors.
    • 5/5
      I've just finished reading Emma Darwin's excellent novel, A Secret Alchemy and very much enjoyed it, perhaps even more so because it's not the kind of book I would normally read. If you give it a try it's important to persevere - I got a bit confused to begin with by a combination of multi-threading and a whole host of historical characters whose names meant little to me, but if you go with the flow and give the author a chance, it's well worth the effort.One small segment in it particularly caught my eye: Craft is art made possible, I think suddenly: possible and functional. Art that feeds and clothes and houses. This really interested me. When I'm not taking a modern view of art (mostly worthless rubbish), I tend to the medieval, when the question with which I started this post was meaningless. Art was the output of artifice. It was anything man made as opposed to natural. So when on Top Gear a while ago they tried to present a car as art to a bunch of art professors, and the academics dismissed it because it had a function, I have, with my medieval hat on to shake my head sadly. Of course it's art. It hardly grew on a bush.What's interesting if you do take the 'craft is art with a function' view, then it seems logical that art does not have a function. And maybe that's where art has gone so wrong in the last 100 years. It always used to have a function. Medieval art either did something practical, pleased the eye or was to the glory of God (or any combination of the three). Some modern 'art' does cover one or more of these functions but much of it doesn't. In reality, I would suggest, there are two categories of unnatural product. Not art and craft, but art and garbage. Both are made by human beings. One has a function, the other doesn't.