Troubadour

by Mary Hoffman

Overview

A dramatic historical thriller from the acclaimed author Mary Hoffman.

Mary Hoffman is an acclaimed children's author and critic. She is the author of the internationally bestselling picture book Amazing Grace. Her Stravaganza series for Bloomsbury has a huge fanbase and its own fan forum. In addition to her writing, Mary is the editor of Armadillo, a children's literature review magazine. She has three grown-up children, and lives with her husband in West Oxfordshire, England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781599907703
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

MARY HOFFMAN is the author of the first three Stravaganza books, as well as The Falconer's Knot, Troubadour, and the international bestseller, Amazing Grace. Mary has often traveled to research the settings for her many books set in Italy. She has three grown children, and lives with her husband in England.
maryhoffman.co.uk

bookmavenmary.blogspot.com

Editorial Reviews

Gr 6–9—Thirteen-year-old Elinor de Sévignan, with her dark hair, brown complexion, and disdain for dancing, struggles to behave as a donzela, the daughter of a lord. When she learns that her father has promised her in marriage to a man she doesn't love, she escapes the castle disguised as a joglar, a young minstrel, and travels with a troubadour throughout the holdings of southeastern France. Even as Elinor lives with new freedom, powerful men plot a crusade against the Cathars, men and women of the region whose beliefs differ from those prescribed by the Catholic Church; war unfolds and thousands die. While Troubadour overflows with rich historical detail of 13th-century France, Hoffman's characterizations and plot depend most on statement rather than description. Though some readers will be drawn to the story, many will be left wishing for less plot and more detail, less period history and more emotional texture.—Bethany Isaacson, Wheaton Regional Library, Silver Spring, MD

School Library Journal

Intertwining narratives of the 13th century add up to less than the sum of their parts. Elinor, gawky daughter of Occitanian lord, nurses a crush on the much older troubadour Bertran; horrified at the prospect of expedient marriage, she runs away disguised as boy joglar. Bertran, meanwhile, carries a dangerous secret; himself a "heretic" Believer, he has witnessed the murder of the Pope's legate and must carry warnings of impending war to the sympathetic nobles of southern France. As Elinor gradually matures from self-centered pubescent to a self-assured poet, patroness and wife, her tale alternates with Bertran's perspective on the brutal Albigensian Crusade. This second story is far more compelling, with its serpentine politics and naked ambition masked by piety on every side, but it suffers from a confusing overload of names and places and battles. While Elinor's adventures are more straightforward, she tends only to react to the choices of her companions and the rush of events. The plots finally intersect, but with less of a climax than a dispirited sputter. Serviceable, but it could have been so much more. (Historical fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews