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A Novel
by Rebecca Lehmann
Book Reviewed by:Disgraced. Beheaded. And out for revenge ...
We all know what happened to Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn. But what if she woke up the day after her execution and took it upon herself to seek justice?
"Nobody was surprised at Anne's conviction. The world loves to put a woman in her place."
The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn's beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously buried in an arrow chest, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for not being able to give him a male heir, reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, and executed based on trumped-up charges, Anne escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for vengeance.
Traveling in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute, Anne navigates the London streets she never before walked and soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world. If Kelly Link had teamed up with Hilary Mantel, the result might be The Beheading Game. An epic journey through the wilds of British royal history and a prescient reminder that "mouthy" women have always been punished, The Beheading Game finally allows one of history's most maligned women a chance to tell her side of the story.
Chapter One
The Arrow Chest
Anne opened her eyes to darkness. And wood. Her face was pressed into the wood. And the left side of her body. She realized fabric as well. A thin fabric that covered her. Linen, she thought, from the smell of it—like wet grass—and the way the air moved through it. Just slightly, for the air here was very still. The linen was wet and sticky. She remembered once wrapping linen around the neck of a stag, whose flank she'd pierced with an arrow, whose throat she'd slit with an ivory-hilted dagger. When the beast had stopped convulsing, she'd draped the gash with linen and played at dressing Christ's wounds. That had been before, when she was young. Her brother, George, had stood beside her, laughing at her joke. She did and didn't remember the two men, servants, who held the dying hart by its horns while she cut its throat. They could have been any men, low class, assigned to serve her.
She understood she could move her hands. Movement came to her ...
What if Anne Boleyn was executed but didn't die? Therein is the plot of the cleverly written novel The Beheading Game. It is the story of a nearly murdered woman whose fatal wounds are overcome. As she nurtures a thirst to avenge her own death, tension develops. Anne's exploration of herself pulls the reader into her thoughts: How can I fix this? What happens now? In that sense, she is every woman who has been on the other end of solipsistic rage and who nurses revenge fantasies to assuage her physical and emotional pain. On the surface, it is a basic story of a nihilist villain and innocent victim, a terrorizing husband and wronged wife. But peel back the layers and it's a story of women, silence, and the reclamation of personal power. It isn't that far removed from Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, where the Queen of Sicilia is accused of adultery, is imprisoned, loses her children and dies of grief but sixteen years later returns to her family...continued
Full Review
(1020 words)
(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it. Lev Grossman, author of The Bright Sword
Magic, romance, revenge, and an utterly irresistible heroine—this book is an instant classic.
There is a warning about children born into the same family. Three children are problematic because one can always be left out and two can gang up on one. That was the case in the Boleyn family. Mary was the oldest. The other two, Anne and George, were best friends. They were sophisticated, intelligent, religious, loved art and literature and loved to laugh. They told each other their secrets, stood trial together, and were executed days apart.
Mary and Anne lacked the closeness of Anne and George because they traveled in different circles, and had different temperaments and personalities, not particularly unusual for siblings. Anne was more opinionated than her older sister, who had an adulterous affair with King Henry VIII before ...
If you liked The Beheading Game, try these:
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Published 2026
Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.
by Hilary Mantel
Published 2010
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power.
by Philippa Gregory
Published 2007
Gregory vividly brings Henry VIII's court, with its intense intrigues, politics, and passions, to life though the lives, and deaths, of his fourth, fifth and sixth wives.
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