Unlock Now Penmarric By Susan Howatch In Digital Edition

book is divided intoparts and commences inwith the narrative of a young Mark Castallack who introduces us to Penmarric, an estate in Cornwall which was to be inherited by his mother Maud, but which instead went to her cousin Giles who in turn had warmed his way to Mauds father affection, after the death of her brother.
Maud herself was separated from her scholarly and gentlemanly husband Laurence Castallack and instead resides in London and spends her life in a legal battle to secure Penmarric for her son.
Mark Castallack who is not fond of his mother and feels more kinship to his fathers quiet and scholarly taste has no interest in Penmarric, but rather hopes to become a historian like his father.
He works hard and goes to Oxford to read history, while his mother continues to wage a battle for Penmarric which she ultimately loses, However with the death of Giless only son, Mark suddenly becomes the heir to Penmarric, It is at this time that his father closes his own house, an estate, in North Cornwall and comes to reside near Penmarric is a small farm which he inherited from his mother.
While visiting his father, one day Marc meets a widow of a farmer, Janna , who isyears his senior, but with whom he is instantly taken, Janna however is not interested in Marc and angered by her rejection, Marc goes away to a sea side resort, where he meets, Rose, a daughter of a doctor who works as a Nanny after her fathers death.
Spurred on my Jannas rejection, he sets out to seduce Rose and then returns to his fathers farm, Rose however soon becomes pregnant and things come to a head as Laurence dies while seeking reconciliation with Marc, after a bitter argument, when the former comes to know about Rose.
With the death of Laurence, followed soon by demise of Giles, Marc takes over Penamrric and sets out to conquer Janna, with turbulent results that reverberate through two generations of the Castallack family, spanning overyears.


The book from the very beginning calls out that it is more of a modern retelling of history of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and the rise and fall of the Plantagenet family.
Each book begins with a brief synopsis of the Plantagenet family history, which vaguely gives the reader the idea of the premises of the chapters which would follow, It is the credit of the author that despite this synopsis, which kind of lays bare what is about to unfold, the grip of the plot is never lost and as a reader, you would keep turning pages to see actually what does happen.
This fine balance of marking out the premises without giving away the solution to the suspense is a fine a delicate art and Ms, Howatch manages this with mastery and great finesse, Her characters are all capable of being generous, liberal, and honest and brave at the same time also behave in an unworthy manner, They are all well drawn out and each character stands independently and distinctly of each other and makes the plot more taut, However there are some inconsistencies there is a sudden turning of really bad to really good without enough explanation for one instance you are blackmailing your own father and next minute the same person is revered as a local hero.
While I understand that man has many facets, goodness is often well rounded and while we all have moments of weakness, rarely have I seen a nature so contradictory.
Having said that, these inconsistencies, do not take anything away from the story and the narratives plays out beautifully, doing ample justice to the lovely beauty of Cornwall as well the very unsettled history of England,.
In fact this is another master stroke by Ms, Howatch, many historical novels have a tendency to become history books where history and not the story is main stay of the novel but in this book, there is again a very fine balance where, one is constantly aware of the changing dynamics in the history and society of Engalnd without taking center stage.
Breakdown of the old social order is brought out more by the conduct of the characters rather than a linear narrative, For instance, at the very onset it is clear Marc Castellack favors the traditional idea of women in vogue then where “intellect was not a ladys forte, but rather home and hearth should be the core of her existence.
Yet the same Marc Castellack someyears later supports his daughters education and sends her to Cambridge, This kind of story telling slowly and distinctly unravels the changes in the history while marrying it skillfully with the core theme,

I cannot say I am absolutely fond of this book, in fact I felt it would make a better film than a book, considering the father against son, brother against brother, blackmail, adultery etc.
However I am extremely glad to have read it once and if nothing else, as a reader, you will be left breathless, with most glorious description of Cornwall that you could see, breathe and even feel Cornwall.
Dramafilled family stuff. It was entertaining for sure, . . but kinda depressing! I wish she had added just a few more wholesome, redeeming characters to get me through all the realistic, selfish characters, : Each chapter was from a different character's perspective, and that was intriguing, It also reminded me of an Isabel Allende book I've read, . . similar family saga issues. In the lates, Mark inherits the family manor, Penmarric, in Cornwall, England, He and Jana fall in love and he asks her to marry him but she is reluctant since she is several years older, As she feared, after marriage and seven children, they drift apart when Janna finds out that Mark has another household with his mistress and two illegitimate children, The marriage spirals downward and it is a vicious tug of war from then on, However, Mark and Jana are only the supporting cast of characters, The novel is actually about five young men as they grow into adulthood and their relations with each other and their father and mother,

I really enjoyed this epic novel that loosely parallels the Plantagenet family, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, It is a deep and moving story about marriage, love, adultery, vindictiveness, and the effects these actions of Mark Henry and Jana Eleanor have on their children,

As always, Susan Howatchs talent for superb complex characterization, written in family drama, is the center point of the novel, It is also her first novel and there were many more later, including the popular Starbridge Series, a history of the Church of England, Im planning on reading these six books one day, First read this in, then again in the mids, by which time Howatch had also written CASHELMARA, THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT, SINS OF THE FATHERS and THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE.


I've just unboxed my copy and set it on my TBR pile I think a reread will be fun, I remember it as a very engrossing story, though when I first read it I had no idea who the characters were inspired by, though Howatch begins each chapter with quotes from historical works her game here and in others was to take historical characters and put them in another timeframe, so in PENMARRIC we have Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine think Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in THE LION IN WINTER! transported to Cornwall in the lateth/earlyth centuries.
Instead of the Crown of England, it's the great estate of Penmarric that's at stake here, She established here the format she used in the subsequent novels already cited, that of sequential narrators, each of whom play a significant role in the story moves the story along until the next character takes over.


Howatch is a gifted storyteller who wrote several 'gothic romances' prior to publishing PENMARRIC, and the very gothicstyle phrase "I was just" apppears many times throughout her novels "I was just setting down my teacup when.
. . " "I was just wondering whether he'd ever appear when, . . "

: I thoroughly enjoyed my reread of PENMARRIC it even got me to rewatch THE LION IN WINTER, Despite itspage length, PENMARRIC is an engrossing and surprisingly fast read, Another fabulous book by Susan Howatch telling the Castallack family saga fromto, JanYves story is my favorite among all the Penmarric's masters, It's quite interesting the parallelism made by the author with the Plantagenet history, Thanks Misfit for this book recommendation, The Wheel of Fortune will be the next book to read soon, sitelink
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When people think of thes, they generally think of bell bottom trousers, Farrah Fawcett hair, or disco.
Me I think of chunky family sagas, Before the bodiceripper craze of thes, Gothic romances and multitiered family epics were in, and PENMARRIC is the perfect example of what a prized specimen of the genre looks like.
Based on the lives of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their many children, PENMARRIC is set in lateC and earlyC Cornwall, revolving around a crumbling Cornish estate and petty manners of inheritance, and the bickering chains of family lineage that twine and intertwine in numerous and surprising ways.




Mark Castellack becomes an inadvertent heir to the Penmarric estate after having it long be denied him, He isn't a Penmar, though at least, not by marriage, But his mother, it seems, might have some personal grievances involved that go well beyond the matter of contesting the will, His father, Laurence, is also a Castellack, an intellectual and moral man, but after Giles Penmar makes Mark his heir, their relationship suffers especially when Mark's promiscuity begins to dive out of control.




After an affair with a gentlybred woman named Rose that ends about how you would expect, Mark marries a woman named Janna and takes her to Penmarric.
We get to read the book from both Mark and Janna's POVs and I loved seeing their story from both their eyes, How Mark's infatuation with Janna borders on violent obsession and how little respect he clearly has for women, especially when they behave in ways contrary to how he expects and tumbles from his pedestal.
Janna, on the other hand, is a woman of low birth who had to struggle and strive to make a living, At first, she blossoms in Mark's harsh glare, but after a while, the wonder fades, and so does their romance,



The next chunk of the book is told from their children both Mark's children of his marriage with Janna, and the ones he had out of wedlock with Rose.
We follow these offspring from childhood to adulthood, from petty rivalries, to the parts they played in WWI and WWII, their affairs and betrayals, their battles and rivalries over inheritance, their grievances, their secrets, their daytoday lives.
Honestly, if you had told me that Susan Howatch could sit me down and have me eagerly read about a character obsessed with the rigors of tending a mine and mining, I would have laughed, but then I read this book and I ended up being fascinated with the concept of tin mining.




One thing I loved about this book is how Susan Howatch doesn't concern herself with moral highhandedness, The characters behave in often unscrupulous or unlikable ways, and she lets them do it, This is not a morality play, These characters come across as painfully human in their flaws, and honestly, considering that this book was published in the earlys, her attitudes towards a lot of concepts like LGBT matters and abortion come across as shockingly progressive.
I love how each chapter opens up with quotes taken from history books to let you know which character and historical event she is doing an allegory for because there is a HUMONGOUS cast of characters in here and it was hard to keep in mind who was who, let alone which Plantagenet they represented.




I love reading about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine so it was really exciting to find out that this was an allegory to that time period I honestly didn't know that when I started reading it until I checked out some of the other reviews.
This book is LOOOOONG but I read through it surprisingly quickly and one of the things I had forgotten about reading long books is how immensely satisfying it is when you finish them, like tucking into a multicourse meal.
I

loved this book and can't wait to read her other one, CASHELMARA, which is about the Edwards I, II, and III,



If you enjoy chonky historical fiction about gloomy people living in gloomy estates, this is the perfect book for you,



.toRead so long ago, back in my theater days, late's, backstage at the Civic Auditorium in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Did anything from this book end up in the legend of the ghost of the civic we were creating Do the tales of that haunting still exist today
We were awful.
Most of everything I said about sitelinkCashelmara can be said about Penmarric, The writing is rich, the characters are real, and the parallels between the surface story and the history it retells are fascinating individually and together, Chapters again are large and narration again switches from one character to another,

Instead of thes, the historical parallel here is Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their "devil's brood," including Richard the Lionheart and the evil King John.
And, perhaps that was part of the problem for me, I entered this book with far more investment and knowledge of the historical time period than I did with Cashelmara, The characters here felt close to their historical counterparts, but less seamless, Janna as Eleanor was close, but not quite Eleanor, The nod to the Anarchy fell flat, as inheriting an estate after legal disputes just doesn't have the same level of flair and gravitas as fighting a civil war that tore apart England for over a decade has.
Philip's obsession with his tin mines, while an interesting parallel, felt like a bit of a stretch from Richard's famous crusades, Events were also not quite as lockstep with history,

That said, I waver, because as much as I can't deny a sense of disappointment with all that, I still adored the book, As much as I might have felt disappointed with tin mines replacing crusades, I spent so much time pondering the historical nuances in the context of Susan Howatch's story that I gained an even greater appreciation for and understanding of those events in history.
Her portrayal of John is, shockingly, one of the best and most humanizing portrayals of him I've ever read, He certainly wasn't likable, but finally he was no longer the two dimensional villain history usually portrays him to be though Mark as Henry II felt far too villainous and without nuance or redeeming features.


So, again, it may not be quite right, but it did make me think about the real historical events and people with a greater depth, Even with my quibbles, I still thoroughly enjoyed Penmarric and highly recommend it,

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