The mistress of Hay
The Mistress of Hay is a historical novel with fantasy elements by the British writer Barbara Erskine . The original ("Lady of Hay") was published in 1986 and was translated into German in 1988.
content
Joanna Clifford, a confident and attractive journalist based in London , is planning a series of articles on the phenomenon of hypnosis . During her extensive research , she lets herself be put into a trance . To her astonishment, she finds herself in 12th century Wales . Now in 1174 it is in a sense in the body of the passionate and beautiful Mathilda, the mistress of Hay-on-Wye , who was a historically guaranteed personality: Mathilda de Braose (1160–1211). As the wife of the unloved Baron William , she now has to master her life to the bitter end at the court of King Johann Ohneland . Again and again Jo slips into the life of Matilda, while in real life with her partner she is shipwrecked in several ways and can not help his violent streak. Matilda, however, after rejecting King John and being betrayed by her husband and abandoned by the lover Richard de Clare, finds a cruel end in dungeon with her eldest son , as the king lets them both starve to death.
output
- Barbara Erskine: The mistress of Hay . Translated into German by Rainer Schmidt , Ullstein , Frankfurt / am Main / Berlin 1988, 576 pages, ISBN 3-550-06159-5
review
“With her debut, Erskine made a rapid bang. The pace of the story is really enormous and sometimes even makes the reader forget to breathe. Playing with the two temporally separated arcs of tension, which in turn are massively reinforced by a framing third, is already a small stroke of genius that the author has mastered in a masterly manner.
A fluent writing style, vivid expressiveness and a coherent story round off the whole thing to make it an impressive reading experience. In addition, there are brilliantly worked out characters who get entangled, play with each other and then collide again in destructive fury. Even supporting characters gain tremendous attention from the reader in their short appearances, difficult to escape from their liveliness and personality ”.
reception
The book sold millions of copies internationally, saw numerous new editions and founded a whole series of similar books, Diana Gabaldon being the most successful in picking up this thread.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from January 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Carpenter, DA: The Minority of Henry III . University of California Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-520-07239-8 ( page 443 ).
- ↑ Review on buchwurm.info
- ↑ Bestselling novelist in Waterstones ( Memento from January 3, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Hereford Times , July 10, 2008, accessed December 28, 2011.