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Lady of Hay, by Barbara Erskine
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So well researched and so well written that it is almost impossible to put down. The novel has everything that readers of racy fiction could ask for: beautiful characters, exotic settings, passion...and situations and characters that are so completely convincing that they come to life.
- Sales Rank: #609166 in Books
- Published on: 1986
- Released on: 1987-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 545 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Erskine's first novel gets off to a fine start. As a participant in a college research project on hypnotic regression, Jo Clifford is almost too good a subject. Under hypnosis, she relives the final, tortured moments in the life of Matilda, a 12th century Welshwoman. In the process, Jo herself comes close to death. The story then jumps 15 years. Jo, now a journalist researching regression, is again hypnotized and again regresses to Matilda's excitement-packed life. Unfortunately, the pace of the early pages is not maintained. The problem is not with Jo/Matilda, who are both well-drawn, or even with the whopping coincidences Jo encounters. What slows the narrative is the bevy of minor characters, Jo's acquaintances. They talk to her and about her, they try to help her and they conspire against her, all at the expense of the central plotline. This is still a good read, but it could have been better. Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Matilda de Braose was an actual 12th-century Englishwoman who angered and was put to death by King John. Fictional journalist Jo Clifford undergoes hypnosis while researching the story of her previous life as Matilda. As she becomes increasingly obsessed with the story, her male friends assume the roles of Matilda's husband, lover, and the king, manipulated by "mad scientist" Dr. Sam Franklyn, who hypnotizes all of them. Jo's story is initially an annoying intrusion in a historical drama that could easily have stood on its own merits. The modern-day characters are all "types," none of them particularly likeable. However, as Matilda's death nears, this complex first novel turns in to an engrossing gothic that races to an exciting conclusion. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., Hoechst Celanese Corp., Somerville, N.J.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
One of the most intriguing, fascinating books I've read in a long time.
Absorbing and hypnotic, Lady of Hay seethes and sizzles with emotions that often erupt out of control... captivating.
Exceptionally vivid... A spooky, quasi-supernatural thriller.
This wonderful mix of time travel/reincarnation set in real historical settings will capture your imagination.
The story will grab your imagination and take you on a ride of twists and turns filled with intrigue, treachery, and lots of passion.
Barbara Erskine is a wondrous storyteller... one of the richest historical novels I have read this year.
I was completely fascinated by both time periods and leading ladies.
Lady of Hay is brilliantly developed, chock full of drama to keep the reader turning the pages long into the night... [Barbar Erskine] is a masterful storyteller.
Erskine is a master storyteller... Kudos to Sourcebooks for reprinting this very entertaining novel.
A well thought out, detailed story with so many twists and turns it gave the plot a new dimension.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A colossal waste of time
By A Lover of Good Books
I enjoy stories about past lives. I love good historical novels. I have some first hand experience with hypnotic regression. I usually love novels written 20-30 years ago. But not this one. It managed to annoy me on many levels.
One could excuse the repeated violent rape scenes, including one perpetrated by the hero, as being characteristic of the 1980s when this book was written, as that was a time before women had finally figured out that a man who says "I love you" and then perpetrates a violent rape belongs in prison, not in your bed.
One might even excuse as characteristic of the 1980s is the fact that all the protagonists in the story behave like alcoholics, downing what we now would consider volumes of drink that would be diagnosed as binge drinking in just about every scene set in the present.
But one one cannot excuse the ridiculous way in which hypnosis and past life regression are presented in this story and the silly way that everyone including supposed medical professionals encourage what would be in real life a psychotic reaction in the heroine.
The heroine herself is Too Stupid to Live--the classic dumb heroine who, when warned not to go down into the darkened basement while a killer is on the loose and the power is out, always goes into the basement. If you enjoy that kind of story you'll love this one. If you like your heroine to be slightly brighter than a guinea pig, save your 99 cents and download something else.
The worst part of this book is that the writer has enough of a command of style to get you reading this bloated, endlessly long book. So that it isn't until you've gotten more than half way through that you realize just how stupid the plotting is. If you keep reading after that you are rewarded with a completely unbelievable and emotionally unsatisfied ending.
Further complaints: The book claims that the history that lies behind the endlessly dull past-life story is well-researched, but any author who puts bubonic plague into a story set in the last decades of the 1100s has NOT done their research. Even in the days before Google mildly educated people knew that the plague first appeared in Europe in 1348.
If the book had swept me into an emotionally moving story I would have easily overlooked the innaccuracies, but the emotional interaction between the main characters is wooden and we never get into their heads or feel their reactions, both in the story set in the present and the one in the past. Both are static, with no character undergoing a hint of growth anywhere. The characters are the same on at the end (which felt like page 9000 by the time I got there) as they were in Chapter 1. How this book got to be a bestseller in a world that produced Outlander a few years later is beyond me.
Perhaps you had to read it in 1985 to love it, since there do seem to be many readers who did. But reading it in 2012, I certainly didn't. Between the rape scenes and the endless boring interactions between dull English people living what must have been considered a glamorous life in the mid-1980s this book struck me as one that should have remained a fond memory.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A wonderful medieval tale with a not-so-strong modern frame
By SpunStories B.
Barbara Erskine's novel LADY OF HAY, in part an historical novel about Maud (or Matilda) de Braose, who had the misfortune of living during the time of King John the Bad (1199-1216), is one of those novels with parallel plotlines.
In 1970s England, we meet 19-year-old Jo Clifford, who has an amazing ability as a subject in a regression hypnosis, when she relives the last, tortured moments of a 13th-century Norman-French woman, whose husband held a great deal of power in the Welsh Marches during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), and his sons Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) and King John.
The modern story then jumps 15 years, and we meet 35-year-old Jo Clifford, successful journalist, and as hard-headed as you expect a modern woman to be. She is given an assignment to investigate regression hypnosis, which is a technique that claims to access a person's memory of a past life. Jo initially pooh-poohs the idea, until she becomes a subject herself.
At that point, the medieval story takes off.
I am not alone in finding the medieval story more compelling, primarily because the stakes are so high, giving Ms. Erskine opportunities for building a spine of tension to hold up the story arc.
The modern part of the story was not interesting. The relationship between Jo Clifford and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Nick went round, and around, and around, and while true to life, this spinning of wheels meant that many opportunities for tension were lost.
Nick's brother Sam is cast as the mad scientist, and as a former scientist myself, I wish that Ms. Erskine had eschewed the cliches and dug deeper to have formed a more interesting character. Sam's motivation is not clear, except that he seems to have gone quite mad for no apparent reason. My question was how did we get from the concerned young man we glimpsed in 1970, to the out-of-control sadist in 1985? No satisfactory answer is given.
The modern story deserves 3 stars, the medieval story deserves 5 stars, so I am giving this novel 4 stars.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Right an unjust death
By Ana'FichesdeLectures
[This review can also be found at anafichesdelectures.wordpress.com]
“Lady of Hay” has been recommend to me for quite a while now and I never got a chance to read it. It is a suspenseful novel full of mystery and historical facts about the Welsh culture, specifically the story of Matilda de Braose of the 12th Century, also known as “Moll Walbee” (1). It is intense, long, enriched with details, tedious at times but you really get to enjoy the novel. You never get bored. Her life will mainly revolve around “three men who so ruled her life: William, the king, and Richard de Clare.”(2)
(1) Erskine, Barbara (2010-10-01). Lady of Hay: Two Women, Eight Hundred Years, and the Destiny They Share (p. 411). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
(2) Erskine, Barbara (2010-10-01). Lady of Hay: Two Women, Eight Hundred Years, and the Destiny They Share (p. 447). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
The author used quite a complex medium of narration, I must say, to invite us to the life of Matilda. The main character, Jo submits herself to a series of hypnosis where she is regressed to her previous life. The theme of reincarnation takes full meaning in this novel. Despite my carelessness on these various themes [hypnosis, regression techniques, and reincarnation paraphernalia], I really enjoyed the historical part of this novel. Even if you don’t really care, nor is invested into reincarnation, as me,
the splendid work done by the author on the historical part is outstanding. The novel is therefore multilayered and complex.
I definitely will be reading more novels from this author.
[* Spoilers alert!]
My complaints:
1. I felt the end was rushed.
2. The author never really explained how Sam knew all along who he was in Jo’s past life.
3. I quite did not agree that Nick represented King John. In my opinion, Richard de Clare was a better choice. You will learn that her love affair with this last one was fictitious anyway.
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