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Summary: The Novice's Tale
Review: The Novice's Tale is a book that stimulates your mind. You are forced to become a part of life at St. Frideswide to try and decode who the murderer is. The book starts off at a slow pace but really picks up at about the fourth chapter. From there on you are hooked on it because there are so many unanswered questions that you want to know. All in all it is an excellent book that entails many different aspects of a mystery.
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Summary: The Novice's Tale
Review: The Novice's Tale was a very interesting book to read. It was exciting, filled with drama and suspense. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good mystery book. I LIKED A LOT!
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Summary: The Novice's Tale
Review: The Novice's Tale was an excellent book that i really enjoyed reading. It kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the time I was reading it. It is a murder mystery, with many suspects who are main characters of the book. Thomasine, the novice was one of my favorite characters of the book. I really like her shy, quiet personality. Some of the other characters of the story are a lot more demanding, making the plot so diverse. The best part of the novel is the surprise ending, when we find out the mysterious killer. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great murder mysteries!
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Summary: The Novice's Tale a suspenceful mystery with a twist.
Review: The Novice's Tale, a book by Margaret Frazer is a suspensful tale interlaced with deception, lurid accounts, and quite frankly strange surprises. Of all places the murder mystery takes place in the quiet walls of a fifteenth century convent, run by a motley bunch of inquisitive nuns who don't quite conform to the sterotypes of the'straitlaced' sister. The narrator and main character is Thomasaine, who is a novice or a so-called 'student nun', hence the title the Novice's Tale.' She had a predilection to becoming a nun, because she was attracted to the profession's quiet, and peacful atmosphere. Sadly, Thomasaine recieved more than she bargained for. Through the innocent perception of Thomasaine the story provides the reader with a very origional twist to the grisly murder mystery. The irony in this situation, is that the credulous Thomasaine believes everything in the convent is and will be innocent, and then in her first begining weeks, as a novice she is forced to witness unholy and most certainly uninnocent acts of murder. The good thing that amounts from the grusome murder or murders, is that, it forced Thomasaine to break out of her anti-society shell. I must say the murder or murders that took place were pretty crazy. Well, crazy enough to push the extremely reserved Thomasaine back into society. In the Novice's Tale any reader will be able enjoy suspence, action, nuns in action, humor , and sentimental value. The Novice's Tale is a easy and fun book to read wether your an addicted book junkie or just a picture browser.
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Summary: Kept me guessing
Review: This book really was very exciting to read. It kept you guessing and made you wonder who really did what in the novel. It always seemed as if you knew who did what but then there's always something new popping up. It was put together very well and kept my attention very well too. After I got to chapter 5, I couldn't put the book down at all. Except there were some parts of the book that were sort of slow at times for example in the beginning it takes a while to get into but once you're in, you get hooked on it.
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Summary: This book is extremely captivating and unpredictible.
Review: This book was a little boring at first, but later on it began to make more sense. You become very entralled in the tale. Dame Frevisse acts as another Sherlock Holmes. She does indeed crack the case on who killed Lady Ermentrude, Martha Hayward, and the monkey. Read the book, it is very exciting.
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Summary: What a hit!!
Review: This book was great after you read the first few chapters. Thomasine was a very brave character as well as Dame Frevisse. the story has alot of twists and turns that will lead you off the path. But what a surprise to find out who did it. I would definetely recommend the book to everyone.
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Summary: Good plot twists
Review: This was the first Sister Frevisse book I've read, and I can't wait to read more. The characters are vivid, our sleuth multi-dimensional, and the historical details seem well researched (although I'm no medievalist). This book has a great little twist at the end, and will keep you guessing!
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Summary: Introducing Dame Frevisse, Benedictine nun
Review: Thomasine D'Evers, a frail 17-year-old, has wanted only the cloister since she was eight years old, driven mostly by intense piety - but partly from fear of the childbirth that killed her mother, and shyness intensified by the isolation of many childhood illnesses. This September of 1431, when Thomasine's final vows will be pronounced at Michaelmas (September 29th), her great-aunt, Lady Ermentrude Fenner, has arrived to pay an unannounced visit.Lady Ermentrude likes to drop in on the priory's guesthall without warning and *with* a large following of servants, men-at-arms, and obnoxious pets. ("'A monkey,' Domina Edith repeated, sounding as if she had been given a second hundred years in Purgatory.") Since one of Ermentrude's favourite pasttimes is arranging family marriages for fun and profit, every visit is accompanied by rude, half-teasing offers to take Thomasine away and arrange a marriage for her with a vigorous young husband (or an older rich one, whichever strikes her fancy). (Robert Fenner, the one young man who seems to admire Thomasine for herself, has sense enough to hold his tongue rather than let the pushy old lady make things worse - for one thing, he knows he's not a good enough match.) On this visit, Ermentrude arrived when Thomas Chaucer was visiting his niece, Dame Frevisse. The current events discussion of the war in France - the Hundred Years' War - is interesting; Henry VI is still a little boy. After meeting with the prioress, Dame Frevisse (who's in charge of the guesthall), and Master Chaucer, Ermentrude leaves the bulk of her retinue to settle in while she dashes off for a quick visit to Thomasine's married sister Isobel. But Ermentrude returns the next day in a frenzy, swearing that Thomasine shan't be forced to take vows, and that she 'has a good husband coming to her after this' - and that she's taking her away from this horrible place at once. She's been nearly raving all day, as Isobel and Sir John, arriving hard on her heels, can attest. Within a few hours, Lady Ermentrude is dead of poison, together with a kitchen servant who sampled one dish too many. Far too many people had opportunity, and with Lady Ermentrude, there's not far to look for motive. Lady Ermentrude had recently left Queen Katherine's service, dropping broad hints of impending scandal - did someone take steps to shut her mouth? Dame Alys, cellarer and chief cook, comes of a family embroiled in a feud with the Fenners, and could be counted on *not* to use new bread for the lady's milksop, but that which could have been tampered with. The lady's servants led a hard life - did something become too much for one of them? Worst of all, of course, Thomasine brought the milksop meant to soothe Lady Ermentrude's throat. Master Montfort, the local 'crowner' (coroner) of northern Oxfordshire at this point in the series, is intensely irritating; he'll bend over backward for an easy explanation. ('Easy' in this case is the quickest resolution that'll let Lady Ermentrude's son Walter return to his rich uncle's deathbed.) Montfort's also a pig; he badmouths any information from any of the sisters, especially Frevisse, who he thinks gets above herself. It galls him that the sisters are under Church jurisdiction rather than his own. Frevisse, with her cleverness and the worldly experience of much travel on pilgrimage in her youth, is left to save Thomasine by figuring out what happened. (However, the expertise and intelligence is distributed among the sisters - for instance, Domina Edith, the prioress, is the first to realize what they'll have to cope with, and Dame Claire the infirmarian is the medical expert.) After her parents died, Frevisse was raised in her aunt's household, but was far closer to her uncle, Thomas Chaucer - Geoffrey Chaucer's son. Chauncer is an anomaly, a powerful, wealthy commoner who refuses all titles, with a lot of noble and even half-royal relations; through him, Frevisse is well connected. All the Dame Frevisse stories have titles after the fashion of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. However, rather than being narrated by the title character as in Chaucer's tales, they're told in limited 3rd person, alternating between the title character and Frevisse. The title character is always a major supporting player in the story, but not necessarily a suspect. The means employed by each murderer vary from story to story, and unlike, say, Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries, years go by between events at St. Frideswide's. Set 24 years before the Wars of the Roses began, signs of the approaching turmoil, like tremors before an earthquake, can be seen. This Benedictine priory differs from Brother Cadfael's abbey, for more reasons than the three centuries separating them. St. Frideswide's holds fewer than a dozen sisters, who are cloistered and who observe the rule of silence. While provided for, the priory isn't particularly wealthy, and since it's only a priory, it must answer to the abbot of another house. Apart from that of the prioress, elderly Domina Edith, the offices are swapped around each quarter, so a sister won't necessarily stay with one job all her life.
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Summary: Mystery galore
Review: Thomasine is a timid "holy" novice. All the sisters believe her to be saintly. She wiles away her time waiting impatiently for the time she could become a full fledge nun. Thomasine's world is turned upside down when her aunt arrives unexpectedly. Thomasine dreads this visit, in which her aunt makes a point in teasing Thomasine mercilessly by threatening to take her out of the nunnery and married to a lustly fellow--something Thomasine is deathly in fear of. After only a few days after arrival, her aunt becomes ill and then dies. Unfortunately, she's poisoned and Thomasine is the number one suspect. Its then up to Sister Frevisse to solve the mystery and find out who did the horrible deed. This is an interesting mystery. I gave it only four stars because I guessed who did it immediately, although I didn't know why. It was worth reading to find out why.
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