VIII
VIII by HM Castor (Templar, 2011) is the story of Henry VIII and his reign and is described by some reviewers as an ambitious novel. One commented that it was, ‘told in the restricting view of the first person’. This is a similar approach to that of Hilary Mantel’s in the Booker winning Wolf Hall. On her website Harriet Castor, the author of VIII explains why she chose first person narration.
Two reasons. I absolutely didn’t want there to be a distance between the reader and Henry. I didn’t want anyone to open the book and think, ‘Oh, this is someone who lived hundreds of years ago; he’s nothing like me’. Because of course Henry lived in a world that was in many ways very different from ours, but he still felt fear and rage and love and frustration like we do. He still got the hiccups, you know, he still tripped over. He was a human being, waking up in the morning, not knowing what was going to happen next in his life.
Secondly, I didn’t want to look at Henry from the outside; I knew that being on the inside and looking out at the world through his eyes would change the story entirely. I wanted to get a vivid sense of the particular world Henry inhabits in his mind – the claustrophobia of it, if you like, and the extent to which his thoughts shape what he perceives to be reality.
Taken from the author’s website available at http://www.hmcastor.com/q-a/ (accessed 1/1/2012)
You might judge for yourself how effectively the technique works and whether it is restricting by reading the first page below; do you want to read on?
I’m still half asleep when I feel strong hands grabbing me.
I try to kick but it seems like I’m twisted up in the bedclothes, and the next minute I’ve been swung up into the air and whoever’s carrying me is walking fast and I’m going bump bump bump against his chest.
He smells of beer and horses and sweat. And my cheek is rammed against cold metal – a breastplate – so I know he’s a soldier.
He must be one of the rebels. Only I didn’t think the rebels were soldiers. I thought they were a mob of stinking peasants fromCornwall, with butcher’s knives and farm tools for weapons.
“Let go of me! Let –“
The man changes his grip; a glove clamps across my mouth. It reeks. “Woah! Don’t struggle, sir. You’re quite safe.”
The words are a trick, of course. I know I am about to die. The rebels have come for me because I am the king’s son and ….”
To see more visit the publisher’s web site at http://www.templarco.co.uk/fiction/harriet_castor.html (accessed 1/1/2012
