Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...
In the early 17th century, the so-called Overbury Affair agitated the royal court of James I of England. While named after its victim, a minor English poet who met an untimely end in 1613, the scandal surrounding his death spiraled out, two years later, to ensnare prominent personalities, staining the court’s image.
As it begins, the two people at the center, a married couple, sit in separate cells in the Tower of London awaiting trial for Thomas Overbury’s murder. Frances Howard, a noted beauty, tells her story to her baby’s wet-nurse, while her husband Robert Carr shares his own perspective of what happened. The ultimate question: which of them was responsible?
A member of the notorious Howard family, Frances had first been wed to the Earl of Essex, while Robert, the king’s favorite, could use a wife of his own to hide the truth about his own affair with King James. Engineering the annulment of Frances’s marriage and her subsequent union to Robert is her great-uncle, the Earl of Northampton, who has plans to tie his family close to royal power. The couple themselves feel a surprising attraction to one another, but Thomas Overbury, Robert’s good friend and former mentor, stands in his way, since he thinks Frances is an immoral whore (he’s blunt about it, too).
The atmosphere is dark and claustrophobic throughout, as conveyed in the psychologically confining environment, with its glimpses of violence and practitioners of black magic. Fremantle effectively depicts the venal sexual politics of early Jacobean England, with nearly everyone vying for their own preferment at the cost of others. Readers may look in vain for anyone to admire; pity may be the best that one can do. The two accounts, by Robert and Frances, run in unison early on, but differences in their stories creep in. A twist partway through turns their situation on its head.
Personally, I found their personalities so unpleasant, apart from the nursemaid Nelly and the Carrs’ innocent baby--who isn’t named--that I found myself closing the book from time to time as a form of mental escape. There’s no denying the effectiveness of Fremantle’s approach to this toxic historical scandal, though. It should appeal to those who enjoy The Girl on the Train-style thrillers.
The Poison Bed was published by Pegasus this month; in its UK edition, published by Michael Joseph, the author writes as E. C. Fremantle. Thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC at my request.
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