Long before Meghan Markle delighted the tabloids and infuriated England’s Royal Family by setting her cap for a prince, there was Wallis Warfield Simpson – an American of humble beginnings, living in England with her second husband, who insinuated herself into high social circles and ended up the mistress of the heir to England’s throne.

Anne Edwards, whose Road to Tara was an exquisitely researched and informative look at the life of the author of Gone With the Wind, has, for some reason, chosen to present the Simpson biography as a novel. The reader is left constantly wondering which of the scenes and dialogue are made up whole cloth and which are quite likely true but cannot, for whatever reason, be substantiated to the degree demanded in a scholarly biography.

The overall story was front-page news in much of the world in the tumultuous years leading up to World War II – how the heir to the throne of England abdicated in order to marry the by-then twice-divorced Simpson. Edwards goes back much farther – to the early days of the 20th century and to a little girl shuffled between a loving but extremely proper grandmother and a feckless merry-widow mother whose impulsive but often unwise choices led to financial insecurity and even borderline homelessness for much of Bessie Wallis Warfield’s youth. Edwards uses this live-by-your-wits childhood to create a young woman determined to have everything she feels the world has denied her, and to get it by any means possible. This Scarlett O’Hara / Becky Sharp / Eve Harrington uses everyone she meets – her wealthy uncle Sol, her school friends, her extended family – to claw her way up the social ladder. At no time do we see Wallis (who dumped her inelegant first name in favor of her unique middle name as an adolescent) consider preparing herself for any career except that of wife, preferably to a man who can keep her in the style to which she would like to become accustomed. More than half the book follows Wallis through her first 20-some years and first two husbands before she finally meets Prince Edward and connives her way into his good graces.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for the American reader to accept is the widely-held notion that men of power and prestige have every right to keep a mistress. Marriage is business; sex is entertainment. And, within certain circles of upper-class British society, it was rather considered an honor to be cuckolded by a Royal. At any rate, that is how Edwards chooses to write the relationship between Wallis and the man who shared his wife with a Prince.

As the book draws to a conclusion, with Edward being pressured at the highest levels to give up his American mistress and take a royal bride, while he remains utterly adamant that he will have Wallis as his bride and queen, there’s an eerily prescient scene in which Wallis is riding in a car being pursued by reporters and photographers, and her bodyguard urges the driver to flee at high speeds. It’s almost the mirror image of a night half a century later when the Princess of Wales’ driver took a similar tactic, but which ended in tragedy.

Wallis: The Novel is a near-miss that will send many readers looking for either a genuine biography or a no-holds-barred roman a clef which needn’t be bothered with fussy historical accuracy. ( )

Interesting take on the whole subject. I never realised Wallis was married to her second husband when she met Bertie. What a terrible upbringing she had from awful, uptight snobbish money-obsessives, no wonder she had such crazy notions. I ended up feeling quite sorry for her and Bertie both, and they certainly both paid heavily for their mistakes!

This is a novel, and while the author did a lot of research, it is frustrating to try to sort the story from fact. But, frustration aside, there is no doubt that Wallis Simpson was a woman who was one who went after, and succeeded in getting what she wanted. Charming, classy, alluring, boastful, she succeeded in allowing the man next in line for the throne of England to abdicate and live a life of ostracization.

If Prince Edward truly wanted the life of King of England is up for speculation. Thus, despite the pressure, in the end perhaps too much is blamed on Wallis, and not enough on the Duke of Windsor.

The author depicts Wallis as some one who had a young life for which she could be pitied. A mother who loved Wallis, but simply could not get her life together, flitting from one place to another, with many men to use her, she clearly was not a role model. Wallis' Aunt seemed to be the one who provided some semblance of stability.

While Wallis was portrayed as someone who had a rough and tumble life, it was also clear that she used anyone in her path who could provide social entry into the highest classes.

Twice divorced, with a checkered past when she met Edward (David), he fell in love with this strong, attractive woman. He gave up a throne; she died alone.

Worth reading, as long as you understand this is a novel and not a biography. ( )

Overall, I was very disappointed with this book.

Wallis is written very one-sided - she's a shallow gold-digger and not much else. No one has just one side to them. The book isn't well-researched at all, there are a lot of historical inaccuracies (that I looked up just to make sure it wasn't me who was wrong, and I don't mean I did my research on the internet). There are some details in the book about Edward the III that are fascinating, but I'm pretty sure they are entirely made up, but who's to know because there is no author's note informing us of this fact - perhaps acceptable when this book was first published, but not in today's book world.

I also found the book dragged throughout the first half - it was all I could do to read the long, long pages of Wallis' childhood and the drama she lived through. There is no doubt Wallis led an interesting life, but we aren't reviewing Wallis' life here, we are reviewing a historical fiction book that had too much imagination, not enough facts, and definitely was lacking in setting the scene so you felt like you were in another world.

A well researched fictional account of a strong woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review. ( )