Penmarric by Susan Howatch

 

Summary (from the publisher): Set against the starkly beautiful landscape of Cornwall, PENMARRIC is the totally enthralling saga of a family divided against itself. At the center of the novel is the great mansion called Penmarric. It is to Penmarric that Mark Castallack, a proud, strange, and sensitive man, brings his bride Janna--the first act in a tempestuous drama that was to span three generations....

Review: In this grand, sweeping, family drama, Mark Castallack and his family live and love around the great mansion Penmarric. As a child, Mark is told that Penmarric, a grand mansion in Cornwall, should be his inheritance and his mother spends her life fighting to recover it for her and her son. It is Mark who truly starts the dynasty explored in this book. For he falls for the charms of not one, but two women. The woman who becomes his wife, Janna and his mistress, Rose. With them he has many children, who grow up to be a feuding extended family that propulsively pushes the novel forward. There are five sections in this novel, each from the perspective of a different family member, which allows the reader to see many sides to the ongoing family drama. 

This was such a delicious family drama. While this book is set in Cornwall and opens up in 1890, it is a retelling of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Which was actually a brilliant idea - the time period and slight changes (landed estate versus kingdom, etc.) make this feel original and fresh and yet she had wonderful source material and actual historical drama to pull from!

 

The plot of this book actually reminds me a lot of Poldark (I have regrettably only seen the television show to date). Both are set on Cornwall, focus on a lot of family drama, and feature tin mines, characters obsessed with the mines, and preoccupation with inheritance and generational wealth. 

Given that this is historical fiction from the 1970s that is set in the late 1800s and based on real history from the 1100s, this held up quite well! I enjoyed all the juicy family drama and intrigue and the large cast of characters. I was sort of disappointed at the conclusion, which felt abrupt after over seven hundred pages of text. There is also a lot of death of characters to resolve plot threads rather than real resolutions. But otherwise, a really enjoyable read.

Stars: 4