The Tower

January 29, 2024
Carr’s lush debut chronicles the imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), following a coup by rebel lords. Recently married to her third husband and several months pregnant after he raped her, Mary is rowed from Edinburgh to Lockleven in 1567 to be held in a castle belonging to her father’s mistress. At her side are two chambermaids: Jane, a native of Scotland, and Cuckoo, who, like Mary, is originally from France. The two women are devoted to their queen and attempt to lighten her spirits through the first difficult months of her imprisonment, including her miscarriage, forced abdication, and severe illness. Tension mounts with the arrival of Lady Seton, Mary’s closest friend, as the three women vie for the queen’s devotion. Further drama ensues after Cuckoo has sex with a lute player and the women smuggle him out of their chamber by dressing him in women’s clothes, an act of subterfuge that inspires Mary’s climactic escape. Adding to the gripping plot is Carr’s successful portrayal of the women’s shared determination—driven by “memories as though they are prayers”—to recapture the kingdom. It amounts to a rousing and lyrical epic. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters Fraser & Dunlop.

February 15, 2024
Carr's taut debut recalls Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait (2022) in its evocation of a highborn Renaissance woman trapped against her will and desperately contriving to escape. The setting is Lochleven Castle, a stone fortress on a Scottish island, hauntingly picturesque from outside but a dank, oppressive prison for Mary, Queen of Scots, and her two chamberwomen, Jane and Marie, called Cuckoo. In 1567, Mary, the embattled Catholic ruler of a Protestant country, is with child by her third husband, the despised Bothwell, and pressured to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, James. The women's shifting emotional patterns and regular flashbacks illustrating the political background keep tension bubbling and prevent the story from feeling claustrophobic. Mary's childhood friend, Lady Seton, joins the trio later, complicating their dynamics. Mary remains entrancing as she earns and feeds off the devotion of her fellow prisoners. Carr dexterously explores how the seductive allure of royalty is undimmed by Mary's grim circumstances, which are depicted with earthy physicality. Despite Mary's foreshadowed downfall, this pulled-from-history novel resounds as a victory for female camaraderie and cleverness.

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Starred review from January 15, 2024
Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned in cold, damp Lochleven Castle, on an island in the middle of the loch, plots her escape while attended by a small, faithful circle of women-in-waiting. Close-focused and vivid, British author Carr's debut centers on a year in the famed royal's life while encompassing the events, people, and history that brought her to this place. It's a detailed character portrait of Mary, a charismatic, flirtatious, "high-spirited beauty" who loves poetry and dancing as much as riding with troops. A queen since she was 6 days old, thrice married, and mother to 1-year-old James, Mary, at 24, is pregnant again when captured and imprisoned. Early in her incarceration she miscarries twins and is then forced to sign abdication papers. After these dramatic events, the pace of the novel slows to accommodate a deeper consideration of the relationships among the four trapped women: Mary's two lowly "chamberers," Jane and Cuckoo, are joined by a third, Lady Seton, one of the aristocratic "jewelled ladies" more customary in a queen's retinue. Friendships, jealousies, and more intense emotions crisscross the group, while their captors spy on them and Mary secretly works with loyalists to secure freedom. Carr's interest in the women--their bodies, their allegiances, their intimacies--offers a contemporary perspective that extends beyond the foursome to other females seeking or manipulating power. These musings and observations are rendered in bright, cinematic prose--"A woman with sunburn on her chest and forearms bends down to pluck white camomile flowers"--yet there's a circularity as well as an inevitable claustrophobia to the structure, which the narrative never entirely outgrows. A robust modern revisiting of popular historical territory.

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