The Fool’s Girl by Celia Rees
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This story is a nod to the twelfth night and its characters and of course William Shakespeare.
Violetta the Duchessa (the equivalent of a young princess), has fled her home country to come to London in search of a holy relic taken from her home in Illyria so that she can restore it to her people. She has the companionship of Feste, her clown from childhood. When they meet playwright William Shakespeare, their fortunes finally seem to turn around.
I adore Celia Rees’s writing. She captures the past magnificently. Her descriptions are always rich and details. Pirates and Witch Child are phenomenal books, I would highly recommend both. However…
The fool’s Girl, I really struggled with. It just took me a long time to settle into the story. The characters and timeline jump back and forth (which is quite normal for both the historical fiction genre and Celia Rees’s writing) but on this occasion, it left me struggling to keep up and pinpoint what was going on.
Once I got into the story, I did enjoy it. The action was great, the love story was enjoyable as was the characters introduced. The historical landscape of London was really visibly brought to life and I was of course left really intrigued by Illyria.
I often think it’s useful to see an extract of a book to get an idea of the writing style. Here is a brief extract so that you can see a sample of the writing yourself:
VIOLETTA
…Until the year when I was ten years old and everything changed. At the end of each summer, the palace was closed up and we went back to the city. I saw less of Stephano during the winter, but that year he did not appear at the summer palace at all.
‘Sebastian has claimed him,’ Lady Olivia said. ‘Made him his page. He wants to make a man of him.’ She laughed but there were tears in her eyes as she said it.
I missed him sorely, but I hid my sorrow in the way that children do. I always had Feste to teach me new tricks and laugh me out of my misery. He’s no child, but he can enter into a child’s world.
Overall View: I begrudgingly gave this a four-star but in reality, for me, it was a bit less, 3 and a half would be more accurate. A mixed bag, great writing, loved the historical aspects but just a lot of effort upfront to get to the good bits.
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