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The Red Queen
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The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble
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Read: September 2016
This is the second list book I have recently read that has completely fallen apart midway through. The book starts out on a strong note. It is the story of an ..."
I read this as one of the first books off the list way back when I first started. I remember liking it, not sure what I rated it, but I liked it. I read another book or two along the same themes at the time. I gave it 4 stars.
My review: The first half of this book is a memoir by a Korean princess, who is channeling through a modern woman to make her write the princess's story. I really liked this part. The descriptions are rich and beautiful, and it is an interesting glimpse at life for elite women in ancient Korea. The second half of this book is the princess's perspective, but follows the modern woman who has written her memoir. This section was odd. It took some getting used to, and I never really got to where I enjoyed it. I liked the idea, but I definitely liked the first part best. I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads for the first half, but the second half by itself would have rated 3 stars at most.
Not unlike the other reviewers above, I found the story of the ancient Crown Princess of Korea and her husband Prince Sado to be a unique story told with rich detail. As a woman of the court, the Crown Princess was confined to the palaces and is not able to view average subjects. The reader is therefore also limited to what she experiences but, nevertheless, the insights we get into the court culture are unique. The second half of the story about the academic, Barbara, who is haunted by the story of the Crown Princess is told in very straightforward detail much like a pop romance and does not hold up its portion of the book at all. Although all supernatural stories, or ghost stories, ask the reader to suspend any concept of realism and be open to the possibility of a spirit world, the world that Drabble constructs constantly pulls us out of the story rather than allows us to immerse ourselves into it.... How exactly does the Crown Princess study Catherine the Great or contemporary psychology....does the ghost spend her time in modern day libraries? Or does she have to inhabit another body and compel them to read about the subjects she is interested in? I kept imaging the Princess watching TV... Also the narrator keeps slipping from the Crown Princess who seems to be talking to her son to an omnipresent narrator who can tell what the Academic is thinking and feeling...the spirits do seem to be able to command action through the academic sometimes and then not others. Plus the ending, in which the Crown Princess finds her heir through the academic resolves nothing, and illuminates nothing. Very strange to find this book on the 1001 list.
Just finished this one and decided on 4 stars. Like many others here, I found the story of the princess compelling and interesting, and I do even like the idea that she is enticing a modern writer to give justice to her life. That was 4 star section for me, but then yeah, the section with Barbara is like...a 2. Gail hit it on the head with "reads like a pop romance". It's probably to most uneven/inconsistent read on the list that I've encountered so far. So I met in the middle and gave it 3 stars overall.
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Ancient Times
“I now know that all monarchies in all countries produce scandals of succession and murmurs of conspiracy and murder.”
“I was not a handmaid. I never became the Red Queen, but I was for many years the Crown Princess.”
Part two titled Modern Times has our protagonist landing in Seoul, Korea. She meets Dr. Oo Hoi-Chang through a snafu about luggage. He offers to take her on a tour of the Crown Princess’s palace. I enjoyed the relationship of these two.
The last 20% of the book was my least favorite, I just lost interest in where the story was going. The author inserts herself in the book too which is a feature I do not like.
Read: September 2016
This is the second list book I have recently read that has completely fallen apart midway through. The book starts out on a strong note. It is the story of an 18th century Korean princess and her mentally ill husband, Prince Sado (despite the title, she never was a queen). The story is narrated posthumously by her ghost, 200 years after her death. I thought the story, which is based upon true characters, was very fascinating and engrossing. My only complaint about this portion of the book, and its kind of a big complaint, is how the ghost had strangely Western views and was strangely knowledgeable about things not known in her lifetime (like postpartum depression, eating disorders, modern psychology, etc.). She also made comparisons to modern day values, topics, culture, and recent literature read (as a ghost? Really?). The second half of the book takes place during modern times and was extremely boring in comparison to the historical fiction part. It is no longer narrated by the dead princess, but by an unnamed omniscient narrator. The main character goes to Korea for a convention, reads the princesses memoir, feels a connection, and becomes obsessed (haunted?) with the story of the dead princess and Prince Sado. She has a fling with an older married man who ends up dying shortly thereafter. This side-plot feels completely irrelevant to the story to me. The main character is oddly similar to Drabble, herself. In the story, this Drabble-like character asks the real Drabble to write a book about the prince and princess. Seemed a bit self-indulgent to me.
I feel the two parts of the story could be better integrated. I feel that most of the first story was mostly abandoned in the second part of the book. There was a lot of unrealized potential here. It could have been good, but instead seemed unfocused and disorganized. Overall, I do not think this is a well-written book and don't feel it deserves to be on the list.