Tidelands - Philippa Gregory

This is my first Philippa Gregory novel, despite her popularity as a well-established household name, and I went into this book quite ignorantly thinking it was a stand-alone novel. It wasn’t until I got to the last few pages, and the narrative was nowhere near at its resolution, when I realised that there must at least be a part two! As it turns out, this is the beginning of a trilogy (the Fairmile trilogy), the second part of which is expected next year. 

This novel is set in the Tudor period during a bloody civil war, which is continually revisited throughout the narrative. In the marshy Tidelands of Salsea Island, off the coast of Sussex, lives the protagonist Alinor Reekie, a poor woman with two children whose husband disappeared six months ago with no explanation. Alinor is a midwife and wise woman, which at the time was a profession closely linked with witchcraft - in a town full of gossiping inhabitants and without a husband for protection and income, Alinor is vulnerable. The novel begins on Midsummer's Eve of 1648, when Alinor pays a visit to the graveyard late at night with the superstitious belief that her missing husband's ghost may appear before her - if his ghost were to appear, this would prove that he had been killed, and declare her free from the abusive marriage she had endured. Instead of a ghost, she encounters a young man creeping about and seeking refuge - he is a young priest and Royalist - and helps to hide him in her garden shed.

The romance which subsequently blossoms between Alinor and James (the young priest under the guise of a local tutor) is frankly somewhat ridiculous. The characters go from hardly knowing one another to being practically obsessed - quite improbable, I believe, after her being abandoned by an abusive man. She so willingly lets down her guard and falls in love again, when in reality I believe she would be much more wary and find it difficult to trust again. Despite this dodgy romance plot, I still very much enjoyed the unfolding narrative and found the book hard to put down - I certainly wait in anticipation for the release of parts two and three. The novel was left on a great cliffhanger so the sequel cannot come soon enough!

Gregory's writing style was highly enjoyable and it is because of this that I will pursue other novels that she has written. I found it reminiscent of Dickens, particularly when paired with the gloomy, eerie setting of the marshland (very Great Expectations) and she really built up a great atmosphere, despite some other readers feeling that she spent far too much time describing the texture of the all-surrounding mud. Nonetheless, I really enjoy descriptive landscapes and this is something I look for in a novel, so it was preferable to me - that way, you can really build up a picture in your mind and become much more invested in the story. Overall, a really good read which I'd recommend to fans of historical fiction!