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The Red Queen
Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a memoir by a Korean crown princess, written more than two hundred years ago. A highly appropriate gift for her impending trip to Seoul. But from whom?The story she avidly reads on the plane turns out to be one of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary ...more
Hardcover, 334 pages
Published
October 4th 2004
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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I'm not a steel-toed boot wearing agro-feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but the ladies in this book protested way too much. A woman of intellect, culture and wit spends little time talking about how intelligent, cultured, and witty she is - these things should be self-evident. That the heroines of this novel constantly took such great pains to assure me of their merits rendered them meritless in my mind.
Coupled with their actions which seemed to embody none of the charact...more
Coupled with their actions which seemed to embody none of the charact...more
While I was entertained by this book, I was also frustrated by it. I didn't really get the connections among the first two parts of the book or why they were there. I think it commented well on the way that certain characters, historical or fictional, can seem to reach through the pages of their memoirs or stories and grab hold of you, but this book seemed to be trying to do something more, but I'm not quite sure what. I don't think it was super successful in that regard. There seemed to be tang...more
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll first say that I didn’t actually finish this novel. However, I did invest a lot of time (and a book club meeting) in it, so I’m counting it.
This novel is written in two parts, both narrated by the "ghost" of Queen Heongyeong, an 18th century Korean crown princess. The first part is about the Queen’s life, with a heavy focus on the actions of her husband, Prince Sado, who was mentally ill and came to an unfortunate end. The second part ...more
This novel is written in two parts, both narrated by the "ghost" of Queen Heongyeong, an 18th century Korean crown princess. The first part is about the Queen’s life, with a heavy focus on the actions of her husband, Prince Sado, who was mentally ill and came to an unfortunate end. The second part ...more
At the center of this engaging and surprisingly complex novel are the memoirs of the Yi dynasty Crown Princess of the late 18th century, Lady Hye-gyong, mother of King Chong-jo. The first half of the novel is Drabble's free and novelistic rendition of the memoirs themselves, based on the translation to English by Berkeley Prof. Ja-hyun Kim Haboush. Quite a story of palace intrigue, the tyrannical rule of King Yongjo, and the bizarre life and tragic end of Chong-jo's father, Crown Prince Sado. T...more
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While I was intrigued and fascinated by the subject matter of the first part of this book, the life of a Korean Queen, elevated from more humble beginnings as a child and married to a Prince who turns out to be mentally disturbed, the second part left me a bit empty. Our narrator throughout is the Red Queen, telling first her own story then that of Babs Halliwell, a 20th Century academic who has suffered her own sadness through mental illness. The Queen feels the need to tell her story, and Ba...more
Margaret Drabble mixes the paranormal and historical fiction in one lengthy package. In the first half of the book, the Crown Princess of Korea speaks from beyond the grave about her life and times. The details of her life are fascinating and I wish Drabble had spent many more pages on them and fewer on the fantasy of a ghost that reads pop psychology and analyzes a life already over. But for all my friends who enjoy the paranormal, this book will provide plenty of entertainment.
T...more
T...more
Oof. I read The Radiant Way a long time ago and liked it, but this was awful. Drabble thinly disguises herself as a *different* aging British academic (why, why bother with the disguise?!?) and then channels (not very successfully) an eighteenth-century Korean princess. I say "not very successfully" because really most of it is Drabble imposing her late twentieth-century values and preoccupations on this hapless historical figure. Time travel gone really bad. Stay away, stay away.
I picked up my copy of THE RED QUEEN several years ago per the suggestion of Peter Boxall's list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, helpfully spreadsheeted by the Internet. Unfortunately, somewhere between 2003 an 2010, he changed his mind (!) and THE RED QUEEN got the boot to make way for new selections. This still makes me really angry if I think about it too hard, as I was doing a few days ago when I saw it on my shelf and decided to read it anyway, read it proudly and indignantly! Ha ha! ...more
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Lorraine
rated it
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Lorraine by:
1001 Books to Read Before You Die
Not super captivating, but interesting more for its writing style and cultural window. The first part is narrated by a 200 yr old "ghost", a Crown Princess of Korea who tells her story with modern day hindsight. Her story is interesting enough, but the amazing part that it is written almost as one full train of thought. There is sentencing and paragraphing, but no chapter divisions or other editorial gaps. The story just naturally transitions across topics and time. Amazing!
...more
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This book didn't really pick up until the last 75 pages. The first half follows the story of the Korean Crown Princess in the eighteenth century. It's an interesting--and, I gather, true--story, but it's narrated by the dead princess in contemporary times. Apparently, you are free to read in the after-life--that's good news, I suppose--so her telling of the historical story is flavored by works and philosophies from later time periods. It almost seems like a short cut for the writer, so she ...more
(Published in 2004 according to Wikipedia) I enjoyed this book very much. It is the first book that I have read in some time solely for my own pleasure, i.e., not because I was discussing it somewhere with some group or another. But, its charm was far more than that. As I read, it seemed almost shallow compared with some of the classics I have been reading. Yet, when I flipped back through it, I realized even more clearly many foreshadowings and intertwined allusions I had missed on first pas...more
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Hmmmm, I don't know very well what to think of this book.
It's written from a very different point of view, from the "dead" Korean princess', which I liked. I loved the language of this book.
But then, it gets a bit confusing as to why the first part of the book (the story of the princess) has so much to do with the rest of the book. Just because Barbara Halliwell goes to Seoul, there's supposed to be a connection?
Also, I was ready to identify with dr. Halli...more
It's written from a very different point of view, from the "dead" Korean princess', which I liked. I loved the language of this book.
But then, it gets a bit confusing as to why the first part of the book (the story of the princess) has so much to do with the rest of the book. Just because Barbara Halliwell goes to Seoul, there's supposed to be a connection?
Also, I was ready to identify with dr. Halli...more
It was interesting for me to read the other readers' reviews of this book.
The first part purports to be a memoir written by the ghost of an 18th century Korean princess, writing with the knowledge of later centuries to explain her life. So we read sentences like 'Matters are made more complicated by my posthumously acquired awareness of psychology and psychological terms' when explaining her husband's disturbed behaviour.
Why Drabble chose to have her protagonist spea...more
The first part purports to be a memoir written by the ghost of an 18th century Korean princess, writing with the knowledge of later centuries to explain her life. So we read sentences like 'Matters are made more complicated by my posthumously acquired awareness of psychology and psychological terms' when explaining her husband's disturbed behaviour.
Why Drabble chose to have her protagonist spea...more
I thouroughly enjoyed this book, and I am so glad I signed up for this bookcrossing ring.
The first section of the book is the beautiful haunting story of the Crown Princess married at 10 years old in the 1700's, her tragic life, the deaths of her son, and her "mad" husband.
In the second part of the book we meet Dr Barbara Halliwell, modern academic, mother to a dead son, wife of a "mad" husband, who becomes enchanted by the story of the Korean Princess whil...more
The first section of the book is the beautiful haunting story of the Crown Princess married at 10 years old in the 1700's, her tragic life, the deaths of her son, and her "mad" husband.
In the second part of the book we meet Dr Barbara Halliwell, modern academic, mother to a dead son, wife of a "mad" husband, who becomes enchanted by the story of the Korean Princess whil...more
I found this book compelling on two fronts: I was interested in the time and place (Korea, mid 1700s) and I was interested in the author's story-telling. The first half of the novel is told in first person through the eyes of the title character, the ghost of a noble-born Korean woman who married the crown prince of her kingdom while she was alive. While telling her story, she 'haunts' a present day woman who appears to be the thinly disguised author. To what end the ghost haunts is not clea...more
Donna Jo Atwood
rated it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Tina Barnes, Kathleen O'Leary
Shelves:
2009-spring-challenge,
fiction
A story within a story. The historical part of the story is about a Korean princess who lived as a contemporary of Catherine the Great, Marie Antoinette, and George Washington. This part of the book is based on her diaries. She was married to the Crown Prince who was quite literally insane, making her life and the lives of those around them very unstable. Eventually he was executed, but her life at court continued to be tense and full of strife.
The other part of the story is of a...more
The other part of the story is of a...more
I expected greater things from this book than what I received. How can a book about the tumultuous life of a Crown Princess in Korea centuries ago be boring? And yet, it was. For one thing, let us not underestimate the importance of chapters. They are a way for the reader to take a break from the story for reflection and pondering. It seemed as if the first part of the book just kept going on and on and by the time it came to an end it was already fuzzy in my mind. They were so many interesting ...more
I really wanted to like this but I just couldn't.
I wanted to give up on page 22, 42, 60 and then finally gave up on page 67.
I'm sure the storyline was interesting but I just couldn't get past the writing. There were no chapters, so the story just kept going and going without any break. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the writing was very erratic, as the writer kept switching from topic to topic, timeline to timeline, so as a reader you didn't have a chance to gain any sort of rhy...more
I wanted to give up on page 22, 42, 60 and then finally gave up on page 67.
I'm sure the storyline was interesting but I just couldn't get past the writing. There were no chapters, so the story just kept going and going without any break. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the writing was very erratic, as the writer kept switching from topic to topic, timeline to timeline, so as a reader you didn't have a chance to gain any sort of rhy...more
I wanted to like this book more than I did. It had an intriguing story, but I found the writing style to be very detached, and so had trouble connecting to the characters. The first half of the book, which was based on actual historic events that took place in Korea in the 1700s, should have been fascinating, given the material, but again the writing style didn't draw me in to get me feeling involved in the story. Having the princess narrate from beyond the grave was an intriguing idea, but it d...more
The Red Queen is told in two parts. The first is about a Korean princess from the 1700s and is loosely based on her memoirs. The second part is the fictional story of an academic from England, "Babs" who is somewhat haunted by the ghost of the Korean princess after having read her memoirs.
The Red Queen lives in tumultuous times and her memoirs are a justification of her actions and the actions of her family. A lot happens in the first part of the book and I found mysel...more
The Red Queen lives in tumultuous times and her memoirs are a justification of her actions and the actions of her family. A lot happens in the first part of the book and I found mysel...more
This might be the 15th book I've read by "Mags" (as I like to think of her) - an exceptional one so far, in that it is a historical novel set in 18th century Korea, a place about which I (and perhaps many Western readers) know absolutely nothing.
Some other writing by me about Drabble http://soldbyvolume.blogspot.com/2007/02...
Finished: seems quite similar in some respects to its successor The Sea Lady - 40-50 something female academics, internal monologues render...more
Some other writing by me about Drabble http://soldbyvolume.blogspot.com/2007/02...
Finished: seems quite similar in some respects to its successor The Sea Lady - 40-50 something female academics, internal monologues render...more
This novel is called a transcultural novel. It is like a story in a story. It starts with the story of a long sense dead Korean girl. She is telling the story from the other side. The second story is the story of the female who is reading the story of the Queen. She goes to Korea to a conference and she seeks to experience the history and cultural of this Korean girl. She comes home to England after the man she shares time with passes away. She finds his wife and helps her adopt a Chinese girl t...more
Julie at All Ears
rated it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
1001-books-to-read-before-you-die,
fiction
The Red Queen is two separate stories about 2 women separated by ethnicity, occupation and time. The first story is about the narrator of this book, a young girl who is chosen to be the bride of the mentally ill Crown Prince of Korea. Set 200 years ago, this part of the book provides a captivating description of court life in 19th century Korea. Lady Hyegyong is fortunate to be selected to marry the Crown Prince. But as the story unfolds, the Crown Prince becomes more and more deranged, beha...more
As I continue my way along the "Top 1000 books to read before I die", I find my self reading more fiction books by authors I've never heard of. If this book is one of Margaret's best, I fear for her other books. The book starts off with about 170 pages of Korean history via a memoir of a dead queen which is being read by the queen's ghost in the present day. The history has some interesting parts but is mostly a slow read. After the story is over, it cuts to modern day England where a ...more
Choupette
rated it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
my third-worst enemy
Recommended to Choupette by:
1001
Shelves:
historical-fiction
Really did NOT like this book. Actually, could barely wait until it was over. Never been a huge fan of historical fiction - I just don't really like it. This particular (and hardly stunning) example of the genre is set in Korea, about 200 years ago. It's about the crown princess, Lady Hong. 200 years after her death, she looks back on her life as a ghost, a ghost who has used the past 200 years of death to study the ways of the modern world and to attempt to... I never quite worked out what it w...more
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