Tag: Italy

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

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The Birth of Venus I love books set in Renaissance Italy but although Sarah Dunant has written three or four of them, this is the first one I’ve read. I had started to read her novel on the Borgias, Blood and Beauty, a year or two ago and struggled to get into it, so that put me off trying any of her other books for a while. Something keeps drawing me to Dunant’s books on the library shelf, though, so a few weeks ago I decided it was time to give her another try.

The Birth of Venus is not, as I’d originally expected, a novel based on the story behind the Botticelli painting of the same name. What the title does actually refer to could be debated, but it seems to me that it alludes to the ‘birth’ or awakening of the novel’s narrator as she falls in love for the first time. The name of the narrator is Alessandra Cecchi and she is the daughter of a prosperous Florentine cloth merchant.

At the beginning of the novel, Alessandra is not quite fifteen years old. Despite her quick brain and artistic talent, she has had to resign herself to the fact that, due to the conventions of 15th century society, she will have no option but to marry the man her parents have chosen for her. When her father returns from a business trip, bringing with him a young artist whom he has commissioned to paint the walls of the family chapel, Alessandra is fascinated. She is curious to see the painter’s work and to learn more about his methods, but she is even more intrigued by the painter himself. Who is this young man, this ‘orphan brought up in a monastery on the edge of the northern sea’?

As the story of Alessandra and the painter unfolds, so does the story of Florence. Beginning with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the novel takes us through the subsequent disastrous reign of Piero de’ Medici, the rise to power of the Dominican friar Savonarola, and the growing threat of a French invasion. This is always a fascinating time and place to read about and I think Dunant does a particularly good job of bringing the setting to life, not just in describing the sights and sounds, but also in showing us how the mood of Florence changes as the city is gripped by Savonarola’s religious extremism.

For a thick book, this was quite a quick read, the sort where you become so swept along with the story you don’t realise how fast the pages are turning. My only problem was that I found Dunant’s decision to refer to the painter as ‘the painter’ throughout the entire book slightly annoying. I’m not quite sure why there really needed to be a mystery surrounding his identity. I felt that the lack of a name created a distance between the character and the reader – I expect this was probably intentional (maybe it wasn’t supposed to matter who he was; all that mattered was what he represented to Alessandra), but if so, it didn’t work for me.

While I can’t really say that I loved this book, I did enjoy it and am now happy to try Sarah Dunant’s other Renaissance Italy novels, In the Company of the Courtesan and Sacred Hearts (maybe I should even give Blood and Beauty another chance). When I finished The Birth of Venus I didn’t want to leave Medici Florence behind, so the next book I picked up was Romola by George Eliot, which is set in the same period and which I’m thoroughly enjoying.

The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

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The Glassblowers of Murano Since reading Marina Fiorato’s Beatrice and Benedick last year, I’ve wanted to try another of her books. There were three on the shelf in the library, so I had a choice to make!

Two years ago, I visited Venice for the first time and, like many tourists, took a vaporetto to the island of Murano and went into one of the famous glass factories to watch a demonstration of glass blowing. It’s not surprising, then, that I was drawn to this particular book by the title, The Glassblower of Murano.

The novel follows Nora Manin as she undertakes a journey very similar to my own, visiting Murano and entering a glass workshop. Nora is not just a tourist, though – she is planning to start a new life in Venice and is hoping to get a job blowing glass. As the descendant of one of the most famous glassblowers in Venetian history, Corradino Manin, and a talented glass artist in her own right, Nora easily convinces the factory owner to employ her. However, as Nora begins to settle into her new job she learns something about her ancestor that she would rather not have known.

Alternating with Nora’s story is the story of Corradino, set in 1681. Like all glassblowers, Corradino is closely watched by the sinister Council of Ten and forbidden to leave Venice in case he gives away his glassmaking secrets, but one day he is approached by a Frenchman who makes a very tempting offer. Whether or not Corradino does betray the secrets of the glass is something Nora needs to discover if she is to restore not only her ancestor’s reputation but her own.

I enjoyed The Glassblower of Murano. It wasn’t perfect and it did feel like a first book (this was Marina Fiorato’s debut novel and having also read her newest one, Beatrice and Benedick, I think her writing has improved a lot over the years) but it was still an interesting, entertaining read and just what I was in the mood for. I loved the setting, of course, and could feel the author’s own love for Venice shining through on every page. The descriptions of glassblowing techniques are fascinating as well; I’ve never really given any thought as to how mirrors were made, so it was interesting to read about Corradino’s methods. I did wonder whether Corradino was based on a real person, but it seems that he’s an entirely fictional character – although the author’s portrayal of the 17th century world in which he lives feels real and convincing.

Usually when a book has dual time periods, I find that I have a preference for one over the other and this was no exception – the historical storyline was my favourite – but I did find the contemporary strand quite compelling too. I was so caught up in the stories of Nora and Corradino that I was almost (but not quite) able to overlook the flaws with the book, such as the implausible coincidences, the subplots that were started but never developed, and the fact that all of the characters apart from the two main protagonists lacked depth.

I had some problems with The Glassblower of Murano, then, but I thought it was an enjoyable book overall and I’m looking forward to reading her others. Her other novel set in Venice, The Venetian Contract, sounds appealing so maybe I’ll try that one next.

Bellarion by Rafael Sabatini

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Bellarion This was the book chosen for me in the Classics Club Spin last November. I was supposed to post my review by the 4th January, but Christmas, other books and life in general got in the way of finishing it on time. Well, better late than never!

Rafael Sabatini is best known as the author of Scaramouche, Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, but he also wrote more than thirty other books including this one, Bellarion – or Bellarion the Fortunate, to give it its original title. Bellarion was published in 1926 but, like most of Sabatini’s novels, it is set much earlier – in Renaissance Italy, in fact: a world of warring city states, tyrannical dukes and beautiful princesses, of powerful condottieri and bands of mercenary soldiers, of sieges and battles, poisonings and conspiracies.

Our hero, Bellarion, is an intelligent but naïve young man who has been raised in the monastery of Cigliano and believes that there is no such thing as sin. Shocked by his heretical ideas, the abbot sends him off to university in Pavia, hoping that he will learn something about the world while he is there. Almost as soon as Bellarion leaves the abbey, he becomes the victim of a bandit pretending to be a friar. With his money and letter of introduction stolen from him, and wrongly accused of being the bandit’s accomplice, Bellarion flees to the Palace of Casale in Montferrat where the Princess Valeria agrees to protect him.

Montferrat is currently under the rule of Valeria’s uncle Theodore, who is acting as Regent until her brother, Gian Giacomo, is old enough to take his rightful place as Marquis. When Bellarion uncovers a plot by Theodore to destroy his nephew and keep the throne for himself, he becomes entangled in a complex web of conspiracy and intrigue that will lead him to the Duchy of Milan and the court of its cruel and brutal young duke, Gian Maria Visconti.

Under the command of the famous condottiero (mercenary leader), Facino Cane, Bellarion quickly rises to become one of the greatest military captains of his time, finding that brains and quick wit can make up for a lack of physical ability and clever strategies and trickery can often work where strength and force fail. Even as he becomes more and more deeply involved in the affairs of Milan, Bellarion never forgets that everything he does is for the benefit of Montferrat and his beloved Princess Valeria. Unfortunately, Valeria has completely misinterpreted his motives and is convinced that Bellarion is her enemy rather than her friend. It seems that all his efforts could be in vain…

I loved this book, as I expected to, having enjoyed two of Sabatini’s others. Scaramouche is still my favourite, but I think I preferred this one to Captain Blood, mainly because I find stories set on land easier to read than stories set at sea! You do still need to concentrate, though, to be able to untangle the complicated political situations in Milan and Montferrat, to follow the rivalries between the two factions, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and to keep track of who is conspiring against whom. Also, because Bellarion is building a career for himself as a military leader, there are lots of battle scenes (large scale battles rather than the more intimate one-on-one sword fighting scenes in Scaramouche). If you’re like me and are often tempted to skip long battles and discussions of military strategies, you can’t do that here – you need to read them all carefully so that you can appreciate Bellarion’s genius!

I did have mixed feelings about Bellarion himself. There’s no doubt that he’s a fascinating character; his rapid transformation from a naive, unworldly young man to a great military commander and political mastermind is great to watch. At the beginning, with his mixture of youthful enthusiasm, innocence and intelligence, he reminded me of d’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers; later, after rising from nowhere to become a trusted leader and master schemer, he reminded me not just of d’Artagnan but also Nicholas de Fleury from Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolo series. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dunnett had read this book; there’s a scene with a captured supply train that made me think of The Game of Kings.)

However, there was something about Bellarion that stopped me from really warming to him as a character. I thought he was a little bit too clever and too aware of his own cleverness. You could say the same, I suppose, about Sabatini’s other heroes, Andre-Louis Moreau and Peter Blood, but they also had flaws and vulnerabilities that made them feel more human and more believable. I never felt that I really needed to fear for Bellarion; whatever difficult situation he got himself into I had no doubt that he would come out of it unscathed. I didn’t like Valeria much either – she annoyed me with her total misreading of Bellarion’s motives and the way she always thought the worst of him. To be fair to Valeria, though, she didn’t have the knowledge that we, the reader, had!

Bellarion is a fictional character, but many of the others in the novel are based on real historical figures. Characters such as Theodore of Montferrat, Facino Cane and his wife Beatrice, Gian Maria Visconti of Milan, and Bellarion’s rival condottiero, the Count of Carmagnola, are all people who really existed – although as I don’t know much about this particular period of history I wasn’t sure how much of the story was based on fact and how much on fiction until I did some research after finishing the book!

Despite not really caring for the main characters I did enjoy this book (another Classics Spin success!) and am looking forward to reading the other Sabatini novel on my Classics Club list, The Sea Hawk.

Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley

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Season of Storms Happy New Year! I had considered posting about my reading plans for 2015 today but, to be honest, I don’t really have any. I know I want to do some re-reading this year, as that’s something I’ve been neglecting, but apart from that I don’t have any specific goals in mind. I want to keep things stress-free and just read the books that I really want to read without worrying about challenges and targets. I do still have some December reads to tell you about, so I thought I would get on with writing about those instead…starting with Susanna Kearsley’s 2001 novel, Season of Storms.

Our narrator, Celia Sands, is a twenty-two-year-old actress who has been offered the lead role in a play being staged at an outdoor theatre in the grounds of Il Piacere, an Italian villa. The play – Il Prezzo – was written in the 1920s by the playwright Galeazzo D’Ascanio for his lover, another actress also called Celia Sands. The night before the play was due to have its first performance, the first Celia disappeared and was never seen again.

Now, decades later, the second Celia Sands (no relation to the first despite being named after her) has been invited by D’Ascanio’s grandson, Alessandro, to star in a renewed version of the play. Arriving at Il Piacere, she meets the other people involved with the play and soon becomes aware of tensions within the group; it seems to Celia that everyone has a secret to hide. As the preparations continue and rehearsals begin, strange things start to happen – a servant disappears without trace, a man is found dead, and Celia suspects that her room may be haunted – and the mysteries of the past become entwined with the mysteries of the present.

Season of Storms is the seventh Susanna Kearsley book I’ve read and the first one I’ve been slightly disappointed by. I think part of the problem was that the pace was very slow at the beginning and the story took a very long time to really get started; I think the book could probably have been a lot shorter without losing any essential plot points. By the time the various threads of the novel began to come together in the second half of the book I was struggling to stay interested.

Unlike some of Kearsley’s other books, this one is set almost entirely in the present with only a few flashbacks in which we are given some glimpses of Galeazzo D’Ascanio and the first Celia Sands. The connections between the past and present storylines weren’t strong enough and I felt that the historical one wasn’t resolved properly; I would have liked more focus on solving the mystery of the first Celia’s disappearance and on the supernatural aspects of the novel, which never really came to anything. I was also disappointed by the romantic side of the story – there was no real spark between Celia and her eventual romantic interest and he was not one of my favourite Kearsley heroes.

On a more positive note, Kearsley’s novels always have wonderful settings and this one is no exception! Il Piacere, the playwright’s villa, is on Lake Garda, somewhere I have never been but have always wanted to visit. The descriptions of the estate and the surrounding area are beautiful. Before arriving at Il Piacere, Celia spends some time in Venice, which is somewhere I have visited and I loved watching her explore St Mark’s Square and the Basilica, the canals and the bridges.

There were other things that I liked – the little theatrical touches such as dividing the story into Acts and Scenes and starting the chapters with quotes from plays; and Celia’s relationship with Bryan and Rupert, the gay couple who raised her when her glamorous actress mother neglected her – but there were too many negative points for me to really be able to say that I enjoyed this book.

Not a favourite, then, but I’m pleased I still have two more unread Susanna Kearsley novels to read – and a new one, A Desperate Fortune, to look forward to in 2015.

Wolves in Winter by Lisa Hilton

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Wolves in Winter Beginning in 1492, Wolves in Winter is the story of Mura Benito, the young daughter of a bookseller from Toledo. Even at the age of five, Mura knows she is not like other children. With her mixture of Moorish blood (from her father) and Nordic blood (from her mother) and her pale, androgynous appearance, she has always looked different. She has also grown up listening to her father read to her from his books and possesses a wealth of arcane knowledge which would be unknown to most little girls.

When Mura’s father is arrested by the Inquisition, he leaves his daughter in the care of his friend, Adara, but Mura is eventually sold into slavery and finds herself taken to Florence where she becomes a maid in the household of Piero de’ Medici. Here she continues her education under the eye of the great scholar Marsilio Ficino, learns the arts of healing and fortune telling with the help of the wise woman Margherita, and makes a special friend called Cecco who shows her the sights of Florence. However, Mura’s life is soon to undergo another big change: the downfall of the Medici, the rise to power of the monk Savonarola and the threat of war with the French mean that these are uncertain times in Florence. Fate will take Mura next to Forli and the home of the Countess Caterina Sforza, known as the Lioness of the Romagna.

I picked up Wolves in Winter while browsing the shelves in the library and was intrigued by the promise on the cover of “poison, alchemy and intrigue in the court of the Medici”. I had never heard of either the book or the author but thought I would take it home and give it a try. I did enjoy some aspects of the novel – it’s an entertaining, imaginative story set against a fascinating historical backdrop – but it wasn’t as good as it could have been or as I’d hoped it might be. The positives first: I loved the atmosphere and the richness of Lisa Hilton’s writing (I particularly liked the way she used colour in her descriptions) and the various settings were vividly described. In 350 pages we move from a Spanish bookshop to a Florentine palazzo, from the camp of a travelling circus troupe to a castle under siege!

It was the fictional story of Mura that I had a few problems with. First, she narrates in the first person and although she does age over the course of the novel, she never feels significantly different from the child she is at the beginning. Then there are the supernatural elements of the book – for example, Mura believes she has the ability to communicate with wolves and that she has the gift of the Sight. I just don’t feel that this added very much to the story. Renaissance Italy is always an interesting setting anyway and you would expect any novel featuring both the Medici and the Borgias to be full of intrigue and drama. Add Caterina Sforza, a fascinating character (and one I haven’t read about until now), and there should already have been enough material here to tell a compelling story without the addition of the ‘magical’ elements.

Mura herself is an unusual heroine; I liked her, but I think her strangeness made her a difficult character to fully engage with. I did appreciate, though, that Lisa Hilton was trying to do something a bit different here and that this was not supposed to be your average heroine or your average historical novel! Another way in which Mura’s story is unusual is that it doesn’t involve a lot of romance – she does have a romantic interest but it only forms one small part of the novel. There’s a good reason for this, which I won’t explain here but which will be revealed if you read the book.

Wolves in Winter was an enjoyable, easy read but it lacked the sort of depth I prefer in historical fiction. This edition of the book includes a preview of the author’s next novel, The Stolen Queen, which is about Isabelle of Angoulême. It looks promising but I’m not sure I’ll be reading any more by this author.

The Italian Girl by Lucinda Riley

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The Italian Girl Rosanna Menici is only eleven years old when she first meets Roberto Rossini, the son of her parents’ best friends. Roberto is an opera singer at La Scala in Milan, a career which to Rosanna seems impossibly glamorous and out of reach. At a family party, Roberto hears her voice and recommends that she have singing lessons, but Rosanna tries not to get her hopes up. Her parents run a restaurant in the Piedigrotta district of Naples and although it is a successful business, they are not rich people and singing lessons are expensive. But when Rosanna’s brother, Luca, comes to the rescue and helps to pay for the lessons, it seems that her dream of becoming an opera star and marrying Roberto could eventually become a reality.

The Italian Girl is a lovely, romantic story spanning three decades and taking us from the streets of Naples and churches of Milan to a peaceful English village and some of the world’s greatest opera houses. It’s not a new novel – it was originally published as Aria in 1996 under the name Lucinda Edmonds – but has been revised and updated so that you wouldn’t guess it had been written so much earlier than the more recent Lucinda Riley books.

One way in which this book is different to the other novels by Lucinda Riley that I’ve read (The Girl on the Cliff, The Light Behind the Window and The Midnight Rose) is that the others have dual narratives, jumping between past and present, but this one, apart from a few letters written by an older Rosanna, follows one linear timeline. I like both types of book, but I do prefer to stay in one time period so I was happy with that aspect of The Italian Girl. Although this book isn’t really what you could call ‘historical’, being set in the fairly recent past, I think I would still have liked more period detail as the 1960s chapters didn’t feel any different from the 1970s or 1980s. On the other hand, this is a story driven more by the characters and their relationships rather than by the setting.

I initially found the young Rosanna a very endearing character. Things did seem to fall into place for her too easily, but I didn’t mind because I liked her and wanted her to succeed. Later in the book, though, I began to find her frustrating. I disagreed with a lot of her decisions, but I was hopeful that she would do the right thing in the end. As for Roberto, I had thought at first that he was going to be the sort of romantic hero I could fall in love with along with Rosanna…suffice it to say that this certainly didn’t happen, but I won’t spoil the story by explaining why not!

While the relationship between Rosanna and Roberto forms the main plot, there’s also a secondary romance between Luca and Rosanna’s friend, Abi. I liked both of these characters and found their story as interesting to follow as Rosanna’s and Roberto’s. I also enjoyed learning about the lifestyle of a professional opera singer and the amount of hard work and training it takes to reach the top. I’m not an opera fan and probably never will be, but this book made me want to listen to some of the arias Rosanna sings in the story.

The Italian Girl is a long book – almost 600 pages, which makes it quite a thick paperback – but after a slow start I was swept away by the story and it didn’t feel as long as it looked. It was the perfect book to read sitting outside in the summer sunshine we’ve had here this week!

I received a copy of The Italian Girl for review.

Secrecy by Rupert Thomson

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Secrecy Secrecy is set in 17th century Florence and tells the story of Gaetano Zumbo, a sculptor famous for creating gruesome wax models depicting the human body in various stages of decay. Zumbo (or Zummo, as he is usually referred to in the novel) arrives in Florence in 1691, having fled from his home in Sicily for reasons which are revealed later in the book. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici, is an admirer of Zummo’s work and commissions a very special sculpture from him – one which must be kept a secret between the two men.

After settling into his new home, the House of Shells, and getting to know his landlady, her young daughter, and another lodger, a French acrobat, Zummo concentrates on creating the Grand Duke’s special wax model. But when he falls in love with the apothecary’s niece, Faustina, and makes an enemy of Stufa, a monk and advisor to the Grand Duke’s mother, Zummo’s life suddenly becomes a lot more complicated.

Gaetano Zumbo was a real person, although I didn’t know anything about him or his work before reading this book. If you’re curious and not too squeamish, you can find plenty of images online showing his various plague scenes, dismembered bodies and rotting corpses. Apparently some examples of his work are displayed in Florence’s Museum of Zoology and Natural History, but I have to admit I don’t have any desire to go and look at them as they sound a bit too grotesque for my liking!

There’s no doubt, though, that Zumbo is an unusual and intriguing subject for historical fiction. The setting is fascinating too. I don’t think I’ve ever read about this particular period of Italian history before and I enjoyed reading about Florence under the rule of Cosimo III – portrayed here as a corrupt and dangerous place. The novel has a dark, unsettling atmosphere and the theme of secrecy is woven into the complex plot in several different ways.

But the interesting protagonist and atmospheric setting were not quite enough to make me love Secrecy. I found the characters, even Zummo himself, difficult to fully connect with and never really managed to engage with any of them on an emotional level. I also thought the narrative style was slightly confusing as it was sometimes not immediately obvious when Zummo was dreaming or remembering something that had happened in his past.

Still, if you enjoy historical fiction set in Italy and are in the mood for something a little bit different, this book could be just what you’re looking for.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley for review.