The Fool's Tale
(Nicole Galland)
Ms. Galland's debut novel has won a special place in my heart, and on my bookshelf. In fact, when I lent the book to a friend last month, I felt a certain twinge of emptiness.
It's not often that a book yanks you up off the couch you are sitting on and plops you down right in the middle of all the action. While reading "The Fool's Tale", I felt like I was right there with the characters- a fly on the wall as I watched Queen Isabel turn from a girl to a noblewoman, as I watched her deal with her philandering husband "Noble" and as I watched her become the object of an intense and impossible love triangle.
Galland weaves a web of adultery, politics and scandal so masterfully, I felt myself thinking about these characters constantly and wishing them to life. I have to admit, the first time I picked the book up and spied the glossary of Welsh terms in the first few pages, I didn't think it would be anything to write home about. But the opening scene sets up a friendship that is deeper and more twisted than the reader can imagine, and is simultaneously easy to relate to. Maelgwyn, nicknamed Noble, and Gwirion set up a precendent of intricate relationships that rings throughout the book. The reader realizes over and over again how noblemen in Medieval times viewed many of the people in their lives as possessions. It is this idea of possession, with a thick ribbon of humanity and kindness, that this tale pulls at the heartstrings.
The reader will find, only a few chapters into the book, that the King Noble's best friend, Gwirion, is the medieval obligatory court jester, and his antics are both endearing, appalling and in the end, are the Kingdom's undoing. I won't give it away... you'll have to see for yourself.
A few days ago, I came home to find that my friend had returned my copy of the book. I was happy to return it to its new home on my bookshelf of favorites. I might even read it again.
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