Giveaway: Watch for a 24 book giveaway to post in the next day/two, on the Manic Mommies website
When: May 18th at 8PM EST
Where: Call-in details will be available a week before the call
Synopsis: While selling oranges in the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, sweet and sprightly Ellen "Nell" Gwyn impresses the theater’s proprietors with a wit and sparkle that belie her youth and poverty. She quickly earns a place in the company, narrowly avoiding the life of prostitution to which her sister has already succumbed. As her roles evolve from supporting to starring, the scope of her life broadens as well. Soon Ellen is dressed in the finest fashions, charming the theatrical, literary, and royal luminaries of Restoration England. Ellen grows up on the stage, experiencing first love and heartbreak and eventually becoming the mistress of Charles II. Despite his reputation as a libertine, Ellen wholly captures his heart—and he hers—but even the most powerful love isn’t enough to stave off the gossip and bitter court politics that accompany a royal romance. Telling the story through a collection of vibrant seventeenth-century voices ranging from Ellen’s diary to playbills, letters, gossip columns, and home remedies, Priya Parmar brings to life the story of an endearing and delightful heroine.
Author Q&A:
Tell us a little about herself: I love: words, writing, books, water, sunshine, dear friends, a worn stone, peppermint, old maps, new cities, lost shoes, pocket watches, 1920’s dresses, handwriting, peonies, sea shells, 1930’s poetry, broken in boots and language.
My mother taught me to write. Whether it was a birthday card or a post it or a thank you letter, she encouraged me to really think about the capabilities of a line, of a rhythm. She made it exploratory and fun.
Then I worked for Eve Ensler, the playwright of the Vagina Monologues, and she wields language with such gorgeous dexterity. She can make people think and experience with words.
I loved being in academic. I loved the rigor and discipline of study. It was wonderful training to write a historical novel. I love history, story and the fictitious place where they meet. I love hearing about what readers love to read. I find it tells you so much about someone.
A favorite book? There are several that love in a wonderful flexible way that keeps them relevant and current in my life.
The Great Gatsby, I was asked once, who my favourite fictional villain was and I chose Daisy Buchanan. Her brittle, destructive, vigilance over her own happiness always shocks me. The irony of that being the exact element that keeps her unhappy is just genius.
Room with a View, Mr. Emerson’s unabashed love and hope for his son George always makes me feel brave and alive. George takes all that faith and puts it toward loving Lucy Honeychurch is such an active verb way. I love it.
Persuasion, I love the quiet steadfast way that Anne Elliot loves.
An Equal Music, It is just a shatteringly beautiful book.
For fun, I am reading Anne Fortier’s Juliet and loving it. For research I am reading about thirty books, among them, The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson. It is about the summer of 1911 in the last moments before the world fell apart.
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