I read The Pirate Queen back-to-back with Isola and so couldn’t help noticing the overlapping similarities between the two. Women in the 16th century, both in dangerous, unexpected situations, both succeeding where a woman would not have been expected to. Both based on real historical figures. But where Marguerite in Isola is a character thrust into a situation, Grainne ni Mhaille (or Grace O’Malley to give her her English name) is a woman who searches out and seizes adventure.
Grace is the only daughter of an Irish chieftain. From a young age she longs to go to sea but is kept home for many years due to being female. Eventually, Grace is married off to the son of another chieftain, an unhappy marriage, particularly because she has been taken away from the man she actually loves. After becoming a mother and following her husband’s death, Grace leverages her family connections and her fierce wits and ambition to take control, pushing back against English domination in Ireland. She and her men function as “privateers” (or pirates, really) along the Coast and Grace is known to be as dangerous as any man.
The story is told in 3 timelines labelled “Maiden”, “Mother”, and “Matriarch”. Each move forward in time so that, all together, we get a full look at Grace’s life, from about the age of 5 to 73. We see Grace as a stubborn young girl, longing for a life different than the one laid out for her as the Chieftain’s daughter. We see her as a young wife in a brutal marriage, then a mother and widow striving to hold onto power, and then as a powerful chieftain herself, intent on maintaining control and protecting her family.
I did find this three-fold story-telling confusing at times because it made it more difficult to remember where and when we were placed, particularly which characters had already been introduced in this timeline, and I feel like I missed some of the nuances of the historical period. I think the story works because Grace herself is a fascinating character within history. She was powerful and feared in a time when those were rarities for women and she had such sway that she eventually had a face-to-face meeting with Queen Elizabeth I. Lawhon keeps the historical facts of Grace’s life as they are known while embellishing the storyline within that framework. Again, this works pretty well because the story of a woman like Grace is always going to be an interesting one. With the three interwoven timelines, we know a lot of what is going to come and so I found myself spending a lot of my reading time waiting for those things to happen. This took some of the propulsion and the excitement out of reading. Perhaps Lawhon expected her readers to be more familiar with the true story of Grace O’Malley but I was not and I would have liked a little more of the plot to be revealed on the page.
