ou guessed it - historical fiction that imagines the life of the Wife from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As you can imagine, Eleanor/Alyson is strong-willed, smart, sexual, and feminist. We hear about her five marriages, her rises and falls through the economic/social ladder, and her relationship with Chaucer.

A LOT happens - friendships, deaths, plagues, violence, love. Some times I was all in, and sometimes I was bored. It's a long book - over 500 pages, and I think it could have easily been trimmed. I also felt it suffered from a problem a lot of historical fiction from long-ago eras has - the mix of modern language and sensibilities with occasional old words/spellings and ideas. I think it's really hard to do historical fiction set in the 1300s in a believable fashion.

Overall, a fun ride, but I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. I think serious Chaucer readers/scholars would be annoyed and find a lot of fault with this. And I think it was a bit too long and detailed for the more casual reader. ( )

Stories getting worse, but maybe read too many. ( )

Wow is this book good!
Eleanor Cornfed is twelve & is about to be married off to an elderly farmer. Yes you heard right but it is 1364 & that was the norm back then. Born under the signs Venus & Mars, she doesn't bow down & meet her fate, she fights back! She battles through five marriages, quite a few pilgrimages, violence, general mayhem & ridiculously differing fortunes to protect those she loves with the help of her god-sib Alyson & poet Geoffrey Chaucer & a host of other friends & family.
This is a modern retelling of Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' & it is well worth a read. A bit of a warning though, this book is looooong so save this one for your holidays! I found the historical aspects of this book fascinating & it actually saved the story for me a few times as I wasn't able to have a few arvo's to just sit & immerse myself in this book which is what I really should have done. I actually got a bit frustrated with Eleanor after awhile, this girl doesn't learn from her mistakes! At all! As much as I loved her spirit, my godfathers this is one prideful woman! One thing I also really didn't like about the story was all the bad language & the serious overuse of the c*** word until I got to the back of the book & learnt that it actually wasn't offensive back in the day. It was just another adjective used to describe a body part. All in all though I loved the way she stood up for those she loved & didn't bow down to expectations. One for the favourites shelf.

Historical fiction at its best filled with many historical characters. Chaucer's Wife of Bath is really Eleanor who was first sent to be married at the age of twelve to a much older man who had a daughter, Alyson, her age. Fulk Bigod, while much older, turned out to be more of a father and Eleanor learned to love him. After his death, she made a terrible mistake marrying a man who in reality was after the land she inherited from Bigod. Alyson remained with her as her "child." The second man who was terrible and stole her land.

Eleanor makes three more marriages - none of them happy in the real sense. Eleanor and Alyson remain close picking up several more people in their house who remain as family.

This is the story of a woman whose options are very limited, yet with amazing strength of character and willfulness, she lives to an old age still surrounded by people who love her. Her live involves what she thought was the murder of a husband, the murder of Alyson whose name she takes on, and life as a prostitute. She had wonderful weaving skills, but was unable to sell her items due to the fact that the Guilds would not let a woman sell.

The story is sad, brutal, and humorous at times. Throughout the story, Chaucer, as a distant relative remains in contact with Eleanor and eventually uses her as the model for his Wife of Bath - married five times - wanting in control of her life. Good read. ( )

The Good Wife of Bath is a modern retelling of a story in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I have never read The Canterbury Tales before so the plotline for the modern story was new to me. Taking place in the latter half of the fourteenth century, Eleanor Cornfed's life with her 5 husbands is portrayed. At the age of 12 she is caught in bed with a priest and married off a week later to a sheep farmer fifty years her senior. Fulk Bigod is well known in the community, well known for outliving 4 previous wives and for being dirty. The community loves nothing more than to tell stories about him. Eleanor is despondent but reflects on her father's past advice to make something out of nothing. With a head for business and a surprisingly kind husband, Eleanor manages to turn her first marriage into a success. She begins to rise through society to a woman of fortune who becomes a trusted friend of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. More marriages follow. Some of them were happy while others were not. In between each marriage, Eleanor goes on a religious pilgrimage. Through her travels she determines what mistakes she made in her marriages but always returns home to repeat those mistakes. All along, though, she pines for control over her life.

This book was a breeze to read. I loved it and read half of its 560 pages in one sitting. I finished it in the next sitting. Eleanor is an amazing character who didn't give up on marriage until the fifth one ended. Her flaws only bring suspense to the story. I kept wondering whether Eleanor would do as she knew in her heart to do rather than succumb to her fickle nature. She should never have married again. When Fulk died, she was a well off business woman and didn't need another man. However, she thought that she needed them because society told her so. It only goes to show how few choices women had in those times. It was funny that when she arrived at her new home with Fulk, all she could see and smell was shit. It was everywhere. The house and fields were filled with it. I was surprised that she decided fairly quickly that she needed to gain her step-daughter's acceptance and began cleaning that house. Eleanor did not have to clean anything in Noke Manor where she grew up. Her family had staff so these decisions were pretty grown up for a twelve year old.

The novel is a fun romp through Eleanor's life. Romp is the correct word here as Eleanor could never get enough sex. In fact, it was her downfall. The Good Wife of Bath is must reading for historical fiction fans. 5 out of 5 stars. ( )