The Woman Who Would Be King by (Kara Cooney)

This book about the pharaoh Hatshepsut was for the Read Harder Challenge category "a book by/about a non-Western world leader." It was my third attempt at a book for this category so even though I had some issues with it and in another timeline may have given up, I pushed on to the end.

Kara Cooney is a good writer and clearly knows her stuff; her feminist take on a woman in power is obviously something that spoke to me. The trouble is, we don't know a lot about Hatshepsut. Cooney could have written a more rigorous and frankly drier book, which I would have enjoyed more, or historical fiction ala Hillary Mantel, which I probably also would have enjoyed more. Instead, Cooney splits the difference, which makes for a frustrating read. 

For example at one point she speculates that Hatshepsut's daughter may have been standing by her deathbed after Hatshepsut's final illness, rending her garments. Except we don't know how Hatshepsut died, how her daughter felt about her, or even if her daughter was still alive at this time. So what's the point? It tells us nothing. The book is full of speculation like this, seemingly based on what captured Cooney's imagination. Some stuff she dismisses out of hand (like Hatshepsut and Senenmut being lovers) despite the fact that there's more evidence for it than half the other stuff she speculates was happening.

My favorite passages were the ones was where she brings in actual facts; discussions of statuary and monuments and what they might tell us, descriptions of how the mummification process worked, etc.  But this isn't a bad book; in fact I think Cooney's hybrid approach could really work for some readers who don't mind a mix of historical fiction and scholarship. I am not that reader, however.