A Net for Small Fishes: ‘The Thelma and Louise of the seventeenth century’ Lawrence Norfolk

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The trial is steeped in accusations, coercion, talk of witchcraft, magic, and the plotting of powerful families to destroy each other.

It centres around two women, Lady Frances Howard and Mistress Anne Turner, and also involves the King’s favourite, Robert Carr, and the suspicious death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Ultimately, though, this is the story of a female friendship that transgressed moral and social norms in a misogynist society. This created a sense of distance to the events that wasn’t overcome by Anne and ‘Frankie’s’ supposed close relationship. Both women are unhappy with their current situations, but not much you can do when you are living in a time when all females are expected to be silent, loyal, and obedient.

Anne is widowed and finds in her solitary status new freedoms but also increasing obligations, stripped of the physical and financial protection of a man. they make for an unlikely pair of friends, but the love, friendship and hardships they face head on together will leave a long lasting impression on those around them and those who read about their escapades. The historical setting of this novel is a rich as a court gown and as detailed as one of Anne’s fripperies. Despite her flaws, Anne is a strong character—too good to be the companion of the impetuous Frances. Five very different lives, linked by a common thread, for all have experienced the true and extraordinary beauty of life, bursting through the veil of daily existence, only to disappear again before it can be fully grasped.

She concentrates on the friendship between Anne and Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, her fellow defendant in what would become known as the “Overbury scandal” in this superb exploration of female agency, sexuality and class in early 17th-century England. Anne’s account of their relationship nicely balances self-interest with sincerity; Frances looks like her route to advancement, until the gossip gathering around the aristocratic lovers threatens her own more modest hopes of romantic happiness. Jago is excellent on clothes: the “glittering husks of power” that once belonged to Elizabeth, now waiting for the new queen to step into them; the “gold and silver constructions” that make the power-grabbing Howards seem “larger and, were it not a sin to say it, somewhat divine”. Something still relevant today, as is the quote below which asks who has been , and currently is, writing our history? Jago deftly explores the sexism and inequality in the Jacobean court, where the standard of behaviour for women to be meek and unassuming (and above all, obedient wives) is challenged by the changing social mores of the time and the sexual intermingling of the court is held up to the light in all its hypocrisy.Anne sets about dressing Frankie powerfully to enhance her presence in court and to encourage the Earl of Essex to notice her and hopefully give her a much desired heir. Tipped into high heels, feathers pinned on top of her hair, Frances can literally walk tall before the king.

The story is told by Anne which I like as you see these dramatic events and famous characters through the eyes someone not based at court. Frances (Frankie) Howard, a member of the powerful catholic Howard family, was betrothed to the Earl of Essex as a political union. Indeed, William Larkin (1580-1619) is an outstanding character in the novel, for he portrayed at least two of the main characters in this Overbury Scandal: Robert Carr and Frances Howard.

Frances is trapped in a miserable marriage while loving another, and newly widowed Anne struggles to keep herself and her six children alive as she waits for a promised proposal. This is Jago’s first foray into adult fiction – having made her name with an award-winning biography of Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland ( The Northern Lights) and a YA novel, Montacute House – and she presents a different, more sympathetic Turner.

Two women with independent ideas, playing their own political game and refusing to conform to the “nets of custom and propriety” who must therefore be destroyed. When Anne meets Frances for the first time, she is married to the Earl of Essex, an abusive man who is unable to consummate their marriage. Lucy Jago highlights a real life 17th century historical scandal set in the reign of James I of England, a blend of fact and fiction that addresses the misogyny of the time in this feminist retelling of the surprisingly strong friendship that sprang between the beautiful Countess of Essex, Frances 'Frankie' Howard and the physician's wife, Mistress Anne Turner, a gifted fashion stylist struggling to find a platform to market her talents in London society. When these two very different women meet in strange circumstances, a powerful friendship is sparked.Language: I’ve seen reviewers on GR say the cod-historical over-bejewelled prose forced them to abandon this. This is one hunting ground where you cannot afford to be seen as pray, for the hounds will swiftly surround you and rip your very soul to shreds. Reminiscent of the writing of Jeet Thayil, Zia Haider Rahma and Nadeem Aslam, Hamilton’s prose is arrestingly visual, intensely lyrical and uncompromisingly political.