In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella S. Haasse

This book is so long and varied that I don't really know how to describe it all. I loved some parts, while others I found intolerably dull. It's certain that I know far more about the Hundred Years War than I did before I read it. What really threw me off about it is that it lacks a sustained style. My favourite parts were the ones about medieval ideals, which are incredibly poetic, and about court life and intrigues, where characters are beautifully developed, but then there are huge sections about politics, battles and negotiations that seem to go on forever. It's also hard to really get a sense of any of the characters, especially the female ones. I didn't wind up having much sympathy for the main character, and I think I would have liked it better if the reader was given more insight into his thoughts and character. It's almost impossible to give a short description of what this book is even about, it appears to meander a lot and doesn't have a central theme. Something I really liked was a sort of reversal of Shakespeare's history plays (showing the same events from the opposite side or from the outside and in a totally different way), Richard II, Henry Bolingbroke, and Henry V are all characters that briefly appear, and are very different from the heroic/tragic figures portrayed by Shakespeare, but there are quite explicit allusions to the plays, for example, the French go on a little reconnoitering venture before the Battle of Agincourt, see Henry V among his men, and observe the behaviour of the English soldiers, in an obvious parallel to the scene in Henry V, where he's strolling around chatting to his men in disguise. Joan of Arc also appears briefly, all too briefly, I liked her a lot and was quite sad that she only put in a quick appearance. So overall, I quite liked it, but I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed and don't really know why I bothered to read it all.