The throngs were so great we needed timed tickets; the showing was at Christie’s at Rockefeller Center.

Oh my…La Liz had had a very long life and mementoes and trophies from each stage  were for sale.   There was the children’s book she had written about her pet squirrel, “Nibbles and Me.”  After her interests turned to more adult fare, there were director’s chairs and a Van Gogh expected to fetch $15 million dollars; there were bound scripts and Louis Vuitton suitcases with “MINE!” tags on them, clothing from all of her bodily incarnations, from her 17” waist days (one of the other visitors said that, but I wonder if she is not confusing Liz with Scarlett O’Hara) to the voluminous designer caftans of her large phase.  But all that was just a lead-up to…the Jewels.

That was what everyone had come to see.  In case after case, draped over lavender busts, were the iconic gems so associated with her life.  There were elegant, vintage pieces given her by Mike Todd, a diamond tiara and a bib necklace with rubies.  There were honkers given her by Richard Burton, leaning heavily toward emeralds.  Both her wedding rings with Burton were for sale.  (Now, a real collector’s item would be all 8 of her wedding rings in a nice leather case.  I wonder what happened to the other 6.)   There was the enormous 16^th century pearl, la Peregrina, and then there was the humonguous, ginormous 33 carat square cut diamond, flanked by a scowling guard and eager onlookers.

Yet oddly, without her in them, they were just…necklaces and rings and earrings.  Her presence, and love of them, was what had given them life and intrigue.  Now she, and the people who gave her the jewels, had vanished, tolling a melancholy bell.  Mike Todd, Richard Burton, Michael Jackson.  Her friends, featured in many photos accompanying the exhibit:  James Dean, Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall, Malcolm Forbes, had passed on.  It was time for Liz to join them, leaving just the shell of the jewels behind.

For us mortals to gape at.

It’s been suggested that I could lead an actual tour, rather than a virtual one, and help my readers experience the life of the character in depth.  Would you be interested in such a tour?  I’ve attached a little survey that you can express your opinions on.  If you will just click here, it will take you to the survey.  I’m very curious as to what your reactions are to this idea.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22D34DJB92S/

I had a trip to Paris planned long before I saw the movie, but I’m glad I saw it just before I left.  I was able to track down the spot where they filmed the cab coming slowly up the windy cobbled street, stopping to take our hero off to 1920s Paris.  I sat and waited but nothing like that came along for me.  Alas, I’m still stuck with using my bare imagination to go back in time.

I had already gotten the addresses of the places where Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald (who appear in the movie) as well as Jim Morrison (emphatically not in the movie) had lived.  I wasn’t surprised to find that Fitzgerald’s part of town was much swankier than Hemingway’s.  And Jim Morrison’s apartment (described as ‘non-descript’) was actually rather attractive.  I don’t know what it was about Paris that made these men feel they could write better there.  I had a desire to rent an apartment myself and find out.

I followed Jim Morrison out to the cemetery where his grave attracts more people than anyone else’s.  It was almost the 40 year anniversary of his death so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there.  The crowd-control barricades were having no luck in keeping out his fans, who clambered over and left their offerings of wine bottles, candles, and cigarettes on the grave.  A group of French teenagers asked me to take their photo next to the tombstone and I did.  They said they wished they had lived then.  I told them that wouldn’t be so good, as then they would be almost 70, but they insisted they’d rather have been born 60 years ago.  I felt like I was in “Midnight in Paris” for real, for the characters there keep wishing they were in another era.

The cemetery also houses Abelard and Heloise, Collette, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Moliere, and hoards of others.  Any one of them could have–and has—made excellent material for us historical novelists. And now they are so quiet.  It wasn’t carved on his tomb, but Moliere said, “We only die once—and for such a long time.”

That is, until a novel or a movie brings them back to life.

Now I embark on my first-ever Blog Tour.  I am posting it here so you can access these ‘tour stops’ as they go along.

Monday, May 2

Book reviewed at Book Drunkard

Interviewed at Pump Up Your Book

Tuesday, May 3

Book reviewed at The Book Connection

Book reviewed at One Day At A Time

Wednesday, May 4

Book reviewed at Slice of Life

Thursday, May 5

Book reviewed at Life in Review

Friday, May 6

Book spotlighted at Books, Products and More!

Book reviewed at Confessions and Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog

Monday, May 9

Book reviewed and guest blogging at Always With a Book

Tuesday, May 10

Book reviewed at Bippity, Boppity Book

Wednesday, May 11

Book reviewed at CelticLady’s Reviews

Thursday, May 12

Book reviewed at Tanzanite’s Castle Full of Books

Friday, May 13

Guest blogging at Tanzanite’s Castle Full of Books

Book reviewed at One Book Shy of a Full Shelf

Monday, May 16

Book reviewed at Bags, Books and Bon Jovi

Tuesday, May 17

Book reviewed at Lynn’s Corner

Wednesday, May 18

Book reviewed at By the Book

Thursday, May 19

Book reviewed at Rundpinne

Friday, May 20

Book reviewed at History and Women

Interviewed at The Hot Author Report

Monday, May 23

Interviewed at Paperback Writer

Book reviewed at Broken Teepee

Tuesday, May 24

Guest blogging and giveaway at Acting Balanced

Wednesday, May 25

Book reviewed at Acting Balanced

Thursday, May 26

Guest blogging at Thoughts in Progress

Friday, May 27

Guest blogging at Lori’s Reading Corner

Book reviewed at Peeking Between the Pages

Book Review: Elizabeth I: A Novel by Margaret George

Elizabeth I: A Novel (April 5, 2011 Viking) reads very much like the Dickens’ favorite A Christmas Carol. We

see through the aged Elizabeth’s eyes the ghosts of the past from her parents to her favorites who flit in and

out of her consciousness; the present with the younger courtiers who no longer have anything of value to

Elizabeth except their looks; the future of England because of course this Virgin Queen left no heir for England.

The decisions of the past and the present and how they affect the future of England are also an underlying

theme for Elizabeth as she struggles to maintain her hold on the country that she married for richer or for

poorer. The Spanish Armada was always a threat, and even though she was able to defeat it in 1589, by the

time Spain had rebuilt its forces to strike again, Elizabeth’s most trusted advisors and the strongest fighters

and nobles had withered away.

She was a virgin. In spite of endless wishful thinking and plays, novels, and movies to the contrary, there’s no evidence the Virgin Queen was anything but.  Had she not been what she publically claimed to be and based her image on, she would have had her power and authority and veracity stripped from her in an instant.

She was the last English monarch to be purely English. She was followed by the Scottish Stuarts, and then the German Hanoverians, and so on.  Even the present royal family had to change its name from Saxe-Cobur-Gotha to Windsor to sound less German in 1917.

She was a local monarch. She didn’t travel very far from London—she never got  as far north as York  and she never crossed over into Europe.

She didn’t hang out with Shakespeare or attend his plays at the Globe. It’s a lovely scene in “Shakespeare in Love”, but the queen did not attend the public theater.  Instead, the theater came to her.  Plays were presented at court.  She met Shakespeare and reputedly liked the character of Falstaff, but she didn’t pal around with him.

She knew she was getting old. She did keep mirrors in her rooms and wasn’t afraid to look in them.  The official portraits, though, were executed according to approved images.  They were not expected to be true likenesses, any more than the portrait of the present queen on money reflects her exact image.  Although it’s updated from time to time, it’s always younger than she is.

She admired her father and praised him often. Since he executed her mother, and ignored her for most of her life, you would expect her to hate him.  Why she didn’t is another mystery of her psychology.

She never tried to rehabilitate her mother’s reputation. Unlike King James, who quickly ordered his mother Mary Queen of Scots to be taken from her obscure grave in Peterborough and reburied in a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth did nothing to comment, one way or the other, on Anne Boleyn and her innocence or lack of it.  She preferred to let sleeping dogs lie.

Elizabeth had hair. She wasn’t bald and she didn’t shave her head.  Her hair thinned and turned gray, but she still had a head of hair.

Elizabeth wasn’t religious. She seemed to have a spiritual sort of humility but one historian observed that when Elizabeth was most troubled, she turned to the classics rather than to the scriptures for consolation.

Elizabeth was the last Tudor. Not only did she have no children, but there were no surviving collateral cousins, legitimate or illegitimate.  She was truly the end of the line.

The build up of layers of perfection, protocol, and preciseness must imbue the eventual encounter with Her Majesty almost overwhelming, which is, presumably, the point.  Yet, like Elizabeth the First, this Elizabeth is also known for being good at chatting with people and for a common touch.  However, her ‘handlers’ probably don’t let her out as much as Elizabeth Tudor.

I refer to my local Borders store.  Just two days after its closing was announced, people with sandwich boards were standing on street corners with signs saying ‘Everything must go!’  The parking lot was full.  The store had feeling of rush and bustle and the checkout line was an hour long.  No one seemed sad about it, just pleased to get 20% off on the books, and 40% off on other items.

I’ve heard people say that it was a nice neighborhood gathering place.  The same was said about our travel store that just closed after 125 years—the owner said they could not stay in business as merely a showroom or gathering place.  Neither could Borders, neither can any store.   They are keeping the Borders on the other side of town, but it will focus heavily on toys and puzzles and such.  Behold the new phenomenon: a bookstore that doesn’t feature books!

At the local level, you don’t see the corporate decisions or other things that can sink a franchise, you only see a familiar friend that’s deserting you.  Already the vultures are circling for the building.  Among the contestants for it are a dental clinic, and a medical building.  It’s a loss for me—I don’t like to hang out in either of those types of buildings unless I have to.

So as I took my turn and waited in line, all my bookstore experiences flashed before my eyes, like a drowning man.  Like many writers, my memories of bookstores are long, meaningful, and many.  As a child, I loved the bookstore/school supply store downtown (when all such stores were downtown).  It was called Denison’s, and therein were books and all the new notebooks and binders and Crayola sets a fifth grader would need. I saved up my money to buy a book about cats, I remember.  I also got “The Big Book of Horses” and “King of the Wind”, which I still have.  Later on there were college bookstores, and little bookstores in England, and Chapters Literary Bookstore in Washington DC and Canterbury Books in Madison, and many others that cheered me.

I couldn’t help thinking, as I watched the procession at Borders, that I was witnessing the end of an era, like Rhett and Scarlett watching the last of the Confederate troops leaving Atlanta.  I don’t think it’s so much a contest between ebooks and print books, or online vs. brick and mortar, as it is the loss of a platform upon which to meet books.  I certainly can, and do, order books from Amazon, and appreciate the ease and ability to do so.  But I have to know about a book before I can order it—I have to know it exists.  It seems the avenues for meeting new books is getting slimmer and slimmer.

So, I have a bulging bag of books from Borders that I’m reluctant to unpack.  That’s my old world sitting there.

The wake will proceed until only the casket is left, and that will probably be for sale as well.

Here in Wisconsin (where we have our own local groundhog, Jimmy, in Sun Prairie, with the appropriate dawn ceremony), the traditional rite never held much suspense, because there’s always six more weeks of winter here.  What we hope for is only two more months of winter.

But the rewind button—how many do we have?  And it got me to wondering, if my characters could have had a Groundhog Day, what would they have changed?  Would Henry VIII have passed on his fourth and fifth wives?  Would Mary Queen of Scots have thought “Uh oh!” and fled to France instead of England?  Would Helen of Troy have decided, “Nope!” about running off with Paris?

These reckless moments are what give us some delicious history, but perhaps if they’d had the chance, my characters would have erased those decisions the second time around.   And my books wouldn’t have been nearly so interesting.

So…perhaps it’s a good thing we don’t have a real Groundhog Day opportunity,   except to watch Punxsutawney Phil.   Or our own lives might be duller.  Saner and kinder, maybe, but duller.

*Elizabeth I
Margaret George
Personal and political conflicts among such larger-than-life historical figures as Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, and Will Shakespeare intertwine in George’s meticulously envisioned portrait of Elizabeth I during the last 25 years of her reign. Unlike most contemporary depictions of the Virgin Queen, this one is actually a virgin; she’s married to England, whose interests she pursues with shrewdness, courage, and wisdom borne of surviving the deaths of her family. Readers see the queen through her own eyes and those of her cousin, Lettice Knollys, wife of Elizabethan heartthrob Robert Dudley, aka the earl of Leicester. Elizabeth’s antithesis, thrice-married and much-bedded Lettice, is driven by passion and self-interest, easily evidenced by the story’s beginnings: it’s 1588, and Elizabeth meets the threat of the Spanish Armada head-on while Lettice calculates how her son might benefit. Like her heroine, George (The Autobiography of Henry VIII) possesses an eye for beauty and a knack for detail, creating a vibrant story that, for nearly 700 pages, enables readers to experience firsthand Elizabeth’s decisions, triumphs, and losses. Rather than turn Elizabeth I into a romantic heroine, George painstakingly reveals a monarch who defined an era. (Apr.)

Publisher’s Weekly-1/10/11

*Elizabeth I.
George, Margaret

Having already tackled Henry VIII (The Autobiography of Henry VIII, 1986) and Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, 1992), George now turns to Elizabeth I. Narrating her own story, Elizabeth is in late middle age, still formidable, but having hot flashes and keeping notes as a memory aid.  Robert Dudley, the love of her life, dies early on, and one by one she loses most of her other trusted councillors as well. Dudley’s ambitious and wayward stepson Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, arrives at court and becomes her last great favorite. As she did in The Autobiography of Henry VIII, George adds an extra dimension by providing a second narrator; here it is Essex’s mother (and Dudley’s widow), Lettice Knollys. Banished from court because of an irregular marriage, Lettice conducts an adventurous sex life (one of her lovers is Will Shakespeare) and schemes to push Essex into power and restore the family fortunes. George’s mastery of period detail and her sure navigation through the rocky shoals of Elizabethan politics mean this lengthy novel never flags.

— Mary Ellen Quinn

BOOKLIST 2/1/11