Title: God Save the King Author: Laura Purcell
Published: September 22, 2012
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 393
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:London, 1788. The calm order of Queen Charlotte’s court is shattered by screams. Her beloved husband, England’s King, has gone mad.
Left alone with thirteen children and a country at war, Charlotte must fight to hold her husband’s throne in a time of revolutionary fever. But it is not just the guillotine that Charlotte fears: it is the King himself.
Her six daughters are desperate to escape their palace asylum. Their only chance lies in a good marriage, but no Prince wants the daughter of a madman. They are forced to take love wherever they can find it – with devastating consequences.
The moving true story of George III’s madness and the women whose lives it destroyed.
For reasons that completely escape me, I rather enjoyed this book. I spent the vast majority of my reading experience rolling my eyes and snarking. Even so, I do actually think God Save the King might be a good book. I don’t know why I think this, but I do. It’s rather a mystery.
Perhaps what drew me to Laura Purcell’s debut was the subject matter. George III and his family are endlessly interesting, if rather tragic. Here in the States, history books generally mention George briefly as the tyrannical king we rebelled against, but there’s rather more to him than that. God Save the King covers about a thirty-year period, and moves quite fast, but still manages to capture most of the important bits. It is, however, a story that rather resembles a telenovela at times.
Purcell chose to tell this story with the help of three female narrators. Queen Charlotte, the Princess Royal, and Princess Sophia. Of those women, I think the only one I liked at all was the Princess Royal, and I only liked her in the epilogue, where she was revealed to be possibly the only person in the entire story who ends up leading a satisfying life. Because let’s face it: God Save the King is a book about a miserable family. They are miserable in the beginning and they only get more and more miserable as things progress. It’s not a happy book.
Queen Charlotte was definitely the most aggravating aspect of the book. In her author’s note, Purcell writes that her intention with this book was to give Charlotte a chance and perhaps portray her in a sympathetic light, since she’s not a hugely popular figure. Well, the author failed. The way I saw it, Charlotte was a miserable, petty, selfish woman who actions were completely unfathomable. She holds grudges against innocent people for no reason whatsoever, and sets out to hurt others just because she’s hurting. Seriously an awful mother, and whatever shred of humanity Charlotte had that Purcell was hoping to show the reader, I could not see it at all.
The second major complaint I had was the writing. Purcell’s prose is extremely purple and clichéd, and also repetitive. If you’re going to write in clichés, don’t reuse the same ten over and over again, at least. I think “her svelte body wrapped in pink tissue” was my favorite line from the entire thing, but there were several other gems. I even had a hilarious Twitter conversation on the subject.
This writing is full of cliches. “Pure delight floods her breast…” and “seething mass of humanity” and other uber-dramatic stuffs.
On the other hand, God Save the King does offer a fairly accurate look at the time period and the progression of the latter parts of George III’s reign. Some dramatic bits were added to spice things up, but it’s obvious that Purcell did her research. The book itself was certainly never disinteresting. I made fun of it, but I did read to the end.
For those interested in high drama stories of Georgian England, it might be worth your time to check into God Save the King. Laura Purcell’s debut has its high-points, though they’re tempered by some very low low-points. For myself, I thought the book was readable, and mildly entertaining, if not first-rate quality.
