The Queen’s Coronation
As she has done in her previous novels, Ryan creates a community of Englishwomen from different backgrounds, brought together to help make history in their own small way. On the eve of the young Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation, Buckingham Palace is thronged with workers who will make the momentous event run smoothly. These include Caroline, an experienced dresser who serves the Queen; Miranda, an American journalist working undercover in the Buckingham Palace Coronation Planning office; and Lucy, a small-town girl working as a maid in the palace but dreaming of a career as a singer. Each character has her own secrets, anxieties, and hidden agendas, which provide fascinating contrast with the formal, order-obsessed world of the palace.
There’s plenty of intrigue as Caroline struggles with a terrible marriage, Miranda with her inability to stop grieving the fiancé she lost in WWII and her guilt over snitching on the Queen to her awful American editor, and Lucy with her naïve decision to trust a wealthy court hanger-on with her virginity and career. Ryan’s plot tends toward the melodramatic, with lots of coincidences and inexplicably bad decisions, and her narrative style tends to spell out each character’s inner turmoil in distracting detail. The men in their lives and work are either complete monsters or gallant saviors, with little variety in-between. However, the Queen’s upcoming festivities and rituals – which are the focus of all three women’s days – are described in all the detail royal history buffs would wish, especially the many gowns Elizabeth famously wore. The Queen herself interacts briefly with Caroline and Miranda, offering a glimpse of the thoughtful role model she presented to the “New Woman” of the 1950s, but she remains a mostly remote figure, which might disappoint readers who were expecting more of a behind-the-scenes look at this eventful period.
