|
|---|
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
title: Lady of Hay
author: Barbara Erskine
genre: historical fiction/paranormal
pages: 571
published: 1986, republished 2010
first line: It was snowing.
rated: 4 out of 5
Journalist Joanna Clifford is researching regression by hypnosis for an article she is writing. In 1970 Jo herself was hypnotized, but remembers very little about the incident. What she doesn't know is that she nearly died during the session, her heart having stopped, and the hypnotherapist gave her a mental suggestion so that she would not remember anything that occurred.
Now, 15 years later, Jo has agreed to be hypnotized again for her research. Her old flame Nick is adamantly trying to talk her out of it, while his brother Sam is as well. However after the first session, Jo regresses to 800 years in the past and finds herself seeing her life through the eyes of Matilda de Braose, The Lady of Hay.
Before she knows it, Jo's hypnotic trances are getting really vivid and she is having a hard time distinguishing what's real from what happened to Matilda.
She learns that Matilda was unhappily married to William, but was secretly in love with Richard de Clare. She experiences Matilda's pain and heartache. Jo even finds herself missing Richard and wanting to regress just to be able to be with him, if only in a trance.
While under hypnosis, Jo experiences Matilda giving birth to her first born son. When Jo awakens she find herself having post-partum symptoms. She also misses the baby and hears him crying at night.
Jo starts to think that she may have at one point in time actually been the Lady of Hay, and is just now remembering her past life. She also insists on being hypnotized again and again until she finds out what became of Matilda.
But soon enough, scared of what is happening to her, she tries to make herself forget Matilda, to no avail.
She laughed uneasily. "It appears I have an alter ego. I still don't believe I am her reincarnation-I can't bring myself to accept that-but this woman is living a life somewhere there inside my head and it is so real! More real in some ways than the life I'm leading here and now."
Jo visits the site of Matilda's former home and while there she falls into a trance midday. The same keeps happening from then on, Jo regresses into these trances on her own with no control over them. She doesn't have to be hypnotized to do it, she can be standing in the middle of a field and mentally be in Matilda's day and time oblivious as to what is going on around her in the present time.
Little by little, Jo begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together, only to find out that some of her current friends were also alive 800 years ago, and knew the Lady of Hay back then.
At 571 pages, Lady of Hay is a pretty hefty book. It took me about 100+ pages in to get hooked on the story. All the while, I didn't really relate to any of the characters, but I was curious about what was going to happen next. The plot fascinated me, but some of the characters annoyed me, mostly the men in Jo's life. There's some physical violence during the current day storyline, and the female characters put up with it, which had me shaking my head as I read.
I found the scenes where Jo would regress into Matilda's life to be really interesting. That's when the book really took a turn into the historical fiction element of the story.
Barbara Erskine makes a smooth transition from Jo's world to Matilda's and vice versa. You can also tell that the author did alot of research for the book. The events and people in Matilda's world are well detailed.
The plot is full of drama, backstabbing, time travel and a touch of romance. I liked the paranormal element to the book as well.
There's alot going on in this story and I found myself hooked from the second half of the book until the end.
It's hard to explain what it's like being someone else, even if only as a vivid dream. She doesn't inhabit my skin. I find myself in hers. I think and speak and feel as her. But I don't know her future anymore than she would have known it.
Lady of Hay is a novel with a rich plot full of interesting characters. I can see this being made into a movie or even a mini-series.
I recommend this one to fans of historicals and paranormals. This story has a nice blend of the two.
Special thanks to Danielle over at Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book.
