Sarah and I both read and enjoyed The Phantom Tree by Nicola Cornick, which is interesting as our reading tastes are fairly divergent. I finished the book in one day, and I was super excited to talk to her about it later.

Sarah: I finished it in a day and a half and shamelessly bothered Elyse for a week or more to ask if she’d read it yet, had she? Huh? Had she read it? (FINALLY SHE DID.)

Elyse: The Phantom Tree is part historical fiction, part romance, and part mystery, with a little bit of magic tossed in. Alternating between Elizabethan England and present day, the story follows two women, Alison Bannister and Mary Seymour (who was the daughter of Katherine Parr and a real person in history). Mary and Alison are both poor relations to the Seymour family and are sent to Wolf Hall in 1557 where they live with other familial cast-offs earning their keep. It’s Alison who discovers a portal that allows her to travel through time to the present day. After she becomes pregnant out of wedlock and the baby is taken from her, Alison flees from banishment into the present day, intending to come back for her child.

Unfortunately the portal is lost to her. She manages to survive and even thrive in the modern world, although she’s haunted by the baby she lost. Mary had promised to discover the infant’s whereabouts and send word to Alison, and now Alison is searching historical records for some clue Mary could have left her.

Sarah: There are also other magical elements in addition to the time portal. Mary has visions and premonitions, both of which are connected to time slippage and parallel timelines. She also has a psychic connection to an unknown person named Darrell, whom she speaks with sporadically, usually with feelings and emotions more than words or extended conversations. Mary’s premonitions frighten her, but her reports of seeing fights in the woods, for example, leads to a search that turns up no evidence of a skirmish. The household begins to whisper that Mary is a witch, and that shifts the balance of power against her very quickly.

Elyse: I really enjoyed this book (hence the one day read) mostly because it focuses on a period in time I find really interesting and have read a lot about, but also because it stars a woman who wasn’t well-known to history.

After seeing the movie Elizabeth in 1998 I devoured everything Tudor. Whenever there was a new release of Tudor-era historical fiction, I read it. I read a lot of non-fiction. That means I’ve read a lot Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir and two enormous books by Margaret George. But these books all focused on the main players in the Tudor era. Basically the famous dudes, and the women who got some historical record left about them because they slept with famous dudes.

I loved that Mary Seymour was a real person that we know almost nothing about. We know she was born, and that’s about it. We don’t know when she died. We don’t know if she married. Cornick chose to take someone almost entirely unknown to history and give her a life and an importance in her time and ours.

Sarah: Yes, I liked that part as well. Experiencing the lives of women whose stories are lost to history is fascinating, especially when they’re part of the backdrop of history. What happens to the child of a former queen when no adults of power or influence are there to intervene on her behalf? Where do they go? And if one isn’t the daughter of a former monarch, what power does one have? Beauty? Wits? Manipulation? All of the above? The options available to Mary and to Alison are extremely limited, and they have to survive each day knowing they’re in a precarious position. Any estimation of their value is political and financial, and the older they get and the less they have in terms of wealth and property, the less valuable they are, so the less options they have in terms of being welcomed into someone’s household.

Elyse: I also liked that Alison and Mary don’t really like each other. At best, they are frenemies. But given their circumstances, they become allies and they keep their promises to each other. They have a complex relationship that spans centuries.

Sarah: The scenes they had together were incredibly tense, too. I wanted them to get along, and I wanted them to be more friendly, but I also understood that this was unrealistic optimism on my part. They couldn’t be friends because the power dynamics that influence their lives pit them against one another, and Alison especially is always aware of what tiny morsels of influence she has in a given moment. She’s not about to allow Mary to outshine her in any way. The stakes are far too high for her to be charitable.

Elyse: The romance in this book was a little lackluster for me. I think part of that was I was so invested in Mary’s story that I was less invested in Alison’s life in the future and the romantic partner she found there. I was much, much more interested in the mystery of what happened to Mary, and to Alison’s baby.

Sarah: Ha! That’s very interesting! I was very invested in Alison’s story, and wanted to know how she got from the 1500s to the present day more than I was invested in Mary’s story. I loved how very different they are. Mary is quiet and plain, while Alison is colorful, very beautiful, headstrong, and wily, and I found the differences in their narration incredibly absorbing. This book is SO STICKY, by which I mean, when you start reading it, make sure you have nothing else to do because you’re going to keep reading. In fact, here is an excerpt from our conversation about this book:

Sarah, 8:33pm – Have you read Phantom Tree?

Elyse, 8:34pm – I have it but haven’t started it. I was just about to start a new book. Should that be it?

Sarah, 9:19pm – I think so! I am very curious what you think. I think this may be where our tastes line up.

…

Elyse, 5:44am – Yeah. Thanks A LOT. Please note the time and that I am reading lol.

Oops.

Anyway, back to the romantic elements: Alison’s romance, especially some of the dialogue, hit me right in the feels, especially as her story is a second chance romance (both parts take place in the present day, though). Mary’s was less satisfying for me, though I understood it. Her romance made a massive jump in progress that rationally I could comprehend, but emotionally left me behind.

Elyse: And while there are some Gross Dudes in this book, it’s largely devoid of violence to women (at least on screen). A lot of historical fiction contains depictions of domestic and sexual violence, so I was pleased I didn’t have to wade through that.

Sarah: Yes, nothing terrible ever happens to the men who deserve a terrible fate, but that’s pretty standard then and now, alas.

I wanted more of the present day after everyone figured out and shared all the information to complete the picture. In a sense, the story begins with Alison and Mary filling in different parts of the story, each working their way from the edge to the middle. It’s as if they’re illustrating a timeline and starting from opposite sides of that line. By the time the book ends, every piece has been filled in, and the reader understands the complete story, and the complete cast of characters – both past and present. In the end, I was satisfied with the story, but I wanted a little more of the present, and the future.

Elyse: I think this book gets a B for me. It has a lot of my catnip, and clearly I was engrossed in it, but Mary’s story felt richer and more developed for me. I sometimes found Alison to be a little shallow as a character, lacking the nuance Mary had. The best way I can describe it is that she often felt cold and unreachable to me as a reader. Despite that I was engrossed enough in the Elizabethan section of the book, and the mystery element, that I  couldn’t put it down.

Sarah: Me, neither. I was at 82% when I had to go pick up a pizza with my husband, and I was absolutely elated that I had to wait for the order because I had more time to read. I could not put the book down. I also love the ideas that stayed with me after I finished: that time isn’t necessarily linear, and that we all have a limited amount of it within our own lives before it slips away: Grasp your time before it runs out.

I agree, this book gets a very solid B, possibly a B+, but for different reasons. I loved Mary and Alison, but I wanted more of the future, because the possibilities were so tantalizing. If you like historical fiction with strong romantic elements, time slippage, and a large, complex mystery, you will really like this book. But like we said, make sure you have time (ha, ha) set aside to read it, because you won’t be able to put it down.