REVIEW: The Beheading Game: A Novel by Rebecca Lehmann
Disgraced. Beheaded. And out for revenge . . .
We all know what happened to Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. But what if she woke up the day after her execution and took it upon herself to seek justice?
“Nobody was surprised at Anne’s conviction. The world loves to put a woman in her place.”
The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for being unable to give him a male heir and reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, she was ultimately executed based on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest, and high treason.
Anne escapes the Tower of London, sews her head back on, then sets out on a quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry her own lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. The stakes are high—if Jane gives birth to a rival heir, Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, will lose her claim to the throne. Traveling the streets of London in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute who becomes a trusted friend (and perhaps something more), Anne soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world.
A fantastical journey through the wilds of England and Tudor history, filled with danger and magic and steeped in Arthurian legend, The Beheading Game is a prescient reminder that “mouthy” women have always been punished. Now, thanks to debut novelist Rebecca Lehmann, nearly five hundred years after Anne Boleyn’s death, one of history’s most maligned women finally has the chance to tell her story.
CW/TW – Yes, Anne sews her head back on then goes to (extreme animal violence!) a bear baiting and finally ends up cutting someone else’s head off. Lotsa blood/gore here.
Dear Ms. Lehmann,
I’ve been reading a lot of books with horror and horror elements lately including this one. But I was looking forward to “The Beheading Game” because Anne Boleyn was going to get some payback, baby. Besmirch my name and rep? Kangaroo court me and my brother and four other innocent men because you want a son and heir so badly? Oh, hells no, Henry. Only, for the most part, this isn’t what I got.
Anne regains consciousness in a cramped, dark space. Feeling around she realizes that she’s in a wooden box and there’s something round placed on her knees. Oh, it’s her head. (Frankly Anne remains rather nonchalant about this. Me, I’d be freaking the fuck out.) Freeing her arms from the linen shroud she lifts the unsecured lid, grabs her head, and holding it in front of her so she can see where she’s going, she creeps out towards the River Gate, snags a row boat, and floats to freedom down the Thames.
Step 1 – steal some sewing supplies and sew her head back on.
Step 2 – Try and blend in with the peasants.
Step 3 – (eventually) get revenge.
Okay so if I’m willing to ask to read a book which features a dead woman with so-so (pun intended) sewing skills re-affixing her head, then believe that somehow everything knits back together (though with a hella scar) then watch her find an (ahem) working girl friend to teach her the ropes of living without servants, sleeping in ditches, the joys of living in the fens, and that girl-on-girl (though only kisses so far) might be something she’s interested in, then I’m willing to accept a lot. And for about 2/3 of the book, I was coasting along to see What Would Happen Next. Mainly this is working girl Alice being nice to Anne before Anne gets snotty at which point Alice points out Anne’s privilege to her multiple times as Anne finds out how the poor folk live, all while Anne repeatedly thinks feminist manifestos. As an aristocrat/former Queen, Anne probably would be snotty and pissed at Henry and his (male) advisors, though, so okay but it got repetitive.
There are moments, such as when Anne sneaks back into the Tower to get her jewels back and robs the mint in order to pay her new bestie for helping her, that the tension increases. But when Anne just has to stick around under windows to eavesdrop I got impatient with her. But she was also checking to see if Henry had married Lady Jane Seymour yet for Reasons. Unfortunately she is almost caught and she and bestie have to do a flit to the fens for a few days which might wreck Anne’s plans. It, and the many, many historical flashbacks of Anne telling her past, also slows down the pace of the book to a crawl.
It is when Anne heads back to London to execute her plan of revenge (yes, revenge! finally!) that things get more weird. A seemingly magical realism bull (yeah I get how this ties to Anne’s last name) acts like a trained circus animal to cart Anne around, she tries to order a band of ruffians to aid her (doesn’t go particularly well), finally gets back to London and, after seeing some mythical “Jack o’ the Green (The Green Man) creature shaking his bottom at her (Tudor twerking?) all the way, sneaks into Whitehall Palace but keeps putting off her plan until a servant who knows her sees her at which point Anne tries to do a “you will ignore me or I’ll haunt you, your children, your children’s children” to order him around (also doesn’t go well), the guards get called out to find her which reads somewhat like a Panto, and then Anne has a confrontation with Cromwell which ends laughably.
But wait, there’s even more weird to come. The revenge scene finally (!) arrives and I’m shaking my head, it’s so hackneyed and trite. I waited the whole book for this?? And then I start thinking about what Anne has done and what position this will leave the country in and what has happened to underage rulers in England’s past. Right, stop trying to make this make sense in real world terms because the heroine of the book is dead with her head sewn back on. Then one final WTF – and this is in a book filled with WTF – is tossed on the pile but … reread the previous sentence.
Sorry but the whole didn’t give me what I hoped I’d get – an exciting and propulsive journey to avenge Anne’s railroading to her execution due to the patriarchy leading to explosive revenge. These adjectives just don’t exist in the story I read and the last section had me snickering more than feeling I’d gotten my payoff. Despite her intelligence and desire for vengeance, Anne comes off as more inept than anything else. She’s also rude and judgy as hell which, fair enough, is probably more how she was in real life but it doesn’t make the reader pull for her. The LGBTQ element felt shoehorned in and like checking a current trends box. C- and the grade is that high because of the blurb and because I agree with Anne’s feminist manifestos.
~Jayne
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UGH. Nope. I saw Six on Broadway, where all Six wives get to tell their story, that was cool, and they managed to do it without sewing their heads back on or coming back from the graves or something. Thank you for the review :)
@Sirius: When I first read the blurb I though, hmmmm, maybe not. Then I kept thinking about it and how I wanted Anne to get her revenge. I’m not sorry I read it but it isn’t what I was hoping for. I’ve seen several reviews that raised the idea that if it had been a novella and concentrated just on revenge, it would be better. I agree.
Such high hopes dashed. I was fine with sewing her head back on, that WTF made a kind of sense because you can’t carry it around in a basket all the time, right? Revenge? Here for it. Thankfully your review was more entertaining than the book appears to be. Ugh for sure.
@Darlynne: So many high hopes dashed with this one. Before she sewed it back on, Anne was walking around holding her head – about chest high – with both hands which in the long run would have been awkward. Maybe some kind of handle could be fashioned thus freeing up one hand? Anyway, she “liberated” some sewing supplies and home-ec’d it back in place.
CrimeReads featured an essay from the author today:
https://crimereads.com/anne-boleyn-women-fatal-rebecca-lehmann/