The Sixth Wife - Softcover

Dunn, Suzannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061431567 ISBN 13: 9780061431562

Publisher: William Morrow & Company, 2008

Synopsis

A gripping novel of love, passion, betrayal, and heartbreak in the unstable Tudor court following the death of King Henry VIII

Clever, level-headed Katherine Parr has suffered through four years of marriage to the aging and irascible King Henry VIII--and she has survived, unlike the five wives who came before her. But less than a year after the old king's death, her heart is won by the dashing Thomas Seymour, and their hasty union undoes a lifetime of prudent caution.

An unwilling witness to the queen's late-blossoming love, Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, harbors nagging suspicions of Kate's handsome and ambitious new husband. But as Catherine is drawn deeper into the web of politics ensnaring her oldest friend, it gradually becomes clear that she has her own dark tale to tell. For though Thomas might betray his wife for power, Catherine might betray her for passion, risking everything she has in a world where love is a luxury not even royalty can easily afford.

About this title

Review:

‘My, what a story...delightfully vulgar and utterly compelling.’ The Times

‘Mesmerising and beautifully written.’ Scotsman

‘Suzannah Dunn...weaves a kind of love story that is both moving and believable. This is the Tudor world as seldom seen...The result is historical chick lit at its most charming.’ Telegraph

‘Dunn [sheds] possible new light on Katharine’s marriage to Thomas Seymour and her final days are treated with sympathy and skill.’ The Tablet

From the Author:

Tudorspeak
by Suzannah Dunn

When the idea for the first of my so-called historical novels came to me -
Anne Boleyn's story in her own words - I immediately dismissed it. I don't
do historical fiction. Then came another idea: Well, don't write it as
historical fiction. But what did I mean by that? I wasn't even a reader of
historical fiction, so how could I presume to know what the new generation
of historical novelists were up to? 'Prithee' and heaving bosoms were what
I meant but, to be honest, I knew that 'prithee' was long gone. Characters
in historical fiction do, though, still talk in a stilted fashion - 'do
not' instead of 'don't' - and even that was enough to put me off. And this
business of the bosoms: it's not bosoms that I mind, it's that they're
heaving. Historical fiction is too often costume drama, it seems to me,
rather than real - human - drama.

Character is what I go for, both as a reader and a writer. My characters
have to be more than the stuffing for some eye-catching dress. They have to
feel real: really, really real. And a big part of how someone is, is how he
or she speaks: that, too, has to feel real. Perhaps novelists who use 'do
not' instead of 'don't' are trying to remind us that their characters lived
in a world very different from our own. And if so, fair enough: that's
certainly one way to do it. But it's not my way. It's not what I want. It's
exactly what I don't want.

That's how I've ended up with readers asking me why I don't write dialogue
as it was spoken in Tudor times (and that's when they sense it's a
conscious decision; some seem to think it's an oversight). I have to
contain my sarcasm: 'Oh, and you know how people spoke, then, do you?'
Because although we know how people wrote (correction: how some people
wrote - those who could write), it would've been different from how they
spoke. We all write differently from how we speak, much more so than we
realise, and if you don't believe me, look at a transcript of speech: it'll
be practically unintelligible. Consciously or unconsciously, we all do a
lot of tidying up to make our words clear on a page. We translate the
spoken word into the written word. Cod olde English is just a fashion in
translation. No more than that. Just an idea. Take it or leave it. Well, I
decided to leave it. Look at it this way: it's acceptable (indeed, de
rigueur) for translators not to give us a literal, word-by-word translation
and instead to phrase things so that they're as faithful as possible to the
original but - crucial, this - give us the flavour. The problem, for me, is
that the flavour of characters who say 'do not' rather than 'don't' is one
of quaintness. And the people I write about were anything but.

Take Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, who narrates The Sixth Wife. My reading
had given me a clear picture of a woman who was thoroughly modern for her
times, an outspoken woman with a disregard for formality and tradition.
That was the impression I needed to give my readers, and no amount of
'prithee' was going to do it.

Oddly enough, truth matters above all to me as a reader and writer of
fiction. Most often when I put down a novel unread, it's because I don't
believe in some or all of it. I'm thinking, 'But he/she wouldn't
do/believe/say that!' My job as a writer, as I see it, is to get to the
truth of something or someone and then enable you, the reader, to see it,
too. To that end, I'm always stopping myself as I write and asking myself,
checking, 'Would he/she really think this/behave like this?' And, now, with
historical fiction, 'Did they...?'

Because, of course, I'm now dealing with people who did live, who were once
real. It matters to me that I do them justice. Reading as widely as
possible gives me a picture of them that's both broad and detailed. Yes,
historians differ in their accounts, but not usually too much. I can weigh
up what they say and come up with something that feels believable. I'd
assumed that Katherine Parr was nice but dull, but a bit of reading around
showed me that she was a lot more interesting than that. Which, happily, in
turn, makes for a more interesting read.

What's hard for me, funnily enough, is making things up. That's my job,
too, though. I need to tell you more than you know, and more than you could
possibly ever know even if you read all the history books. I'm not a
historian and I should do something other than merely retell history. I
have to go beyond or behind what's known and come up with a story. In The
Queen of Subtleties, my invention was the king's confectioner - not her
existence (her surname and the kind of work she would have done is what we
know of her) but her unwitting, tragic involvement with the innocent young
man who was executed as the alleged lover of Anne Boleyn. In The Sixth Wife
the sad truth is that cautious, clever Katherine Parr survived her marriage
to Henry VIII only to make the all-too-common mistake of falling for a man
who wasn't worthy of her and who messed around with her fourteen-year-old
stepdaughter. My invention is a central role for Katherine's best friend in
this sorry tale.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0061431567
• ISBN 13: 9780061431562
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336