THE LOST BOOK OF ELIZABETH BARTON
JENNIFER N. BROWN
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: A dual-timeline murder mystery set in an English country manor, when an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess
Historian Alison Sage has made a groundbreaking archival discovery―she found a manuscript containing the prophecies of a 16th century nun, Elizabeth Barton. Barton’s prophecy condemning Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn led to her execution and the destruction of all copies of her prophecies―or so the world believed.
With Alison’s discovery, she is catapulted to academic superstardom and scores an invitation to the exclusive Codex Consortium, a week of research among a select handful of fellow historians at a crumbling manor in England, located next to the ruins of the priory where Elizabeth herself once lived.
What begins as a promising conference turns into a nightmare as the eerie house becomes the site of a murder. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect, and it seems that answers lie at the root of a local legend about centuries-old hidden treasure. Alison’s research makes her best-suited to solve the mystery―but when old feelings resurface for a former colleague, and the stakes of the search skyrocket, everyone's motives become murky.
Alison’s cutthroat world of academia is almost as dangerous as Elizabeth Barton’s sixteenth-century England, where heretics are beheaded, visions can kill, and knowing who to trust is a deadly art. The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton is a thrilling novel, crackling with the voices of the past and propelled by a mystery that will leave readers in suspense until the very last page.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: A woman of faith such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, but no education or privilege such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, who has visions and claims they're sent by her god such as the factual Elizabeth Barton, and whose country...world, really...is rocked by religious and political strife is going to be very useful to The Powers That Be. No matter what the factual Elizabeth Barton says, believes, or promotes, both sides o any fight are going to do everything they can to gain control over her person and her message. That she already lives in a convent is the first big win for the Catholic/anti-Lutheran/no-divorce-for-Henry pole of the Tudor social spectrum.
Elizabeth Barton was not educated but also was not stupid. She knew what her handlers wanted her prophecies to point towards, and while I believe her statements were sincere in representing her god's will I'm in no doubt that she made the statements to align with her handlers' interests. Not least because she shared them, though also because she believed her god was of one mind with herself and her handlers.
Was the factual Elizabeth Barton a pawn, a manipulated victim of powerful men seeking a political edge in a very consequential power struggle? Or was she a canny survivor who put her credibility behind what turned out to be the losing side in a societal upheaval, with catastrophic consequences? My response to that is yes.
In the 21st century another woman living through a time of upheaval, fictional Alison Sage, discovers the book of prophecies written by Elizabeth Barton during her lifetime. As there are many, many juicy tea-spills that resolve seriously vexing issues of faith, foreknowledge of events, and Elizabeth Barton's real thoughts, fictional Alison Sage becomes famous and powerful overnight. In a passage of History where megalomaniacal murderous tyrants are suddenly back in fashion as heads of state, Elizabeth Barton's true thoughts and honest purposes in making her prophecies bid fair to be as powerful in shaping public opinion as they were when the Royal Serial Killer was on the throne.
If the story had stayed in this register I'd've lapped it up like a camel hittin' the oasis after crossing the entirety of the Empty Quarter on a mouthful of salty water. Alas, fictional Alison Sage is a Good Girl who still reminds her ex that his mother's birthday is coming up, defers to the men in her academic discipline while getting infodumped on, and doing her own infodumping, gets entangled in the literal dopiest fatal entrapment-cum-treasure hunt scheme ever devised...you know there's really no point in trying this story wanted to be a romantic novel but Clio, Muse of History, said "Ἄρα οὐκ" and made it a chase/quest mystery with too much talking...even for academics.
It all hangs together, Author Brown doesn't drop any story-threads, the ending is the one that best fits the developments in the story. It just does this while taking its own sweet time to get from A to B while everyone infodumps each other, which even academics who luuuv them some monologuing would not put up with their colleagues giving the 101 course synopsis to everyone they meet at a conference. Of subject matter experts.
Nope.
Nor does fictional Alison Sage deciding to trust someone from her past with crucial information about her career-altering discovery. Nor...well, my point is made. Structural integrity does not make for structurally supported magnificence of edifice design. I'm not sorry I read the story because I think Author Brown made her historical-resonance points obvious enough to be meaningful, made the factual Elizabeth Barton aka "The Holy Maid of Kent" or "The Mad Maid of Kent" or other such obscurative labels as suited the dismissive purposes of male historians of different eras take a more solid shape than she usually does, and managed still to leach all the propulsive drive I thought would be inherent in this set-up, a female Cotton Malone tale of derring-do, out.
It's a sadness to me because this is the kind of idea I batten on finding in a novel.
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