WordsofaReader

Okay so I'm going to preface this by saying that Godiva is my first piece of historical fiction. There was no particular reason I hadn't read any before, I guess it just hadn't really occurred to me to seek any out. I'm not sure why exactly I chose Godiva as my stepping stone since I'm not really up on my Anglo Saxon England, meaning this book could be jam packed with all kinds of historical inaccuracies and I wouldn't know it. I get the feeling though that this book stays true to its time setting.Godiva, if you haven't already guessed, follows Lady Godiva and her husband Lovric, The Earl of Mercia in the years leading up to the Norman conquest.Godiva is a historical figure that I literally knew nothing about coming into this book, bar the whole legend of her riding naked through town on horseback.I'm not sure if this book really taught me a whole lot more then that but what it did do was paint a picture of life during that time period in that region.The religion, the poverty, the social practices, the education (or sometimes lack there of), it was all very eye opening. Reading a novel like this from a modern perspective was at times a little shocking and often quite confronting. The apparent barbarism and uncivilised practices left me feeling uneasy throughout at least the first half of the book. This being said it did take me awhile to get acquainted with the world I had willingly stepped in to.Once I had come to terms with things and grown to know and like our main characters it was really just a downhill slide to the end.Jones' prose was such that it drew the reader into the world instantly, a characteristic that contributed to both my difficulty in coming to terms with the book and my eventual enjoyal of the story.Sadly Nerys Jones passed away while Godiva was in the middle of the publishing process and did not get to see how it was received, I'm sure she'd be glad to know that her book acted as a introduction to historical fiction to at least one avid reader.Godiva turned out to be an enjoyable event. It widened my understanding of a period of time that was before closed off to me and made me curious to seek out other historical fictions in the future. Not bad at all.