Michelle Lovric – She Reads Novels

I loved Michelle Lovric’s The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters – it was one of my books of the year in 2014, the year it was published – and I’ve always intended to read more of her work. I finally picked up her 2010 novel, The Book of Human Skin, in the summer, but when I saw how long it was (512 pages) I decided to save it for Laura’s Doorstoppers in December event instead!

I didn’t love this book quite as much as Harristown Sisters, but it’s still a fascinating story. Set in Venice and Peru around the turn of the 19th century, it has five very different narrators. The character around whom everything else revolves is Marcella Fasan, a young woman from an aristocratic Venetian family. From birth, Marcella has been the subject of her brother’s hatred and envy – being twelve years older, Minguillo has always expected to be the sole heir to the family fortune and he resents the arrival of a baby sister who poses a threat to his inheritance.

As the years go by, Minguillo’s treatment of Marcella becomes increasingly cruel and brutal, until her friends decide it’s time to intervene. One of these is Gianni, a servant in the Fasan household. Minguillo believes him to be stupid and illiterate, but this is far from the truth and Gianni uses Minguillo’s misconceptions to his advantage. There’s also Santo Aldobrandini, a young surgeon who develops his skills treating the wounded in Napoleon’s army before making his way to Venice where he falls in love with Marcella. When he hears of what Marcella has suffered at her brother’s hands he’s determined to do whatever he can to rescue her.

The perspective switches between these four characters – and a fifth I haven’t mentioned yet – as they take turns to tell the story. The strongest and most unusual narrative voice is Gianni’s; although he’s far more intelligent than Minguillo assumes and has learned to read and write, his grasp of the written language is still not very good and he spells words phonetically or uses the wrong word in place of the right one. I found this annoying and distracting at first, but eventually got used to it – and it does result in some amusing spelling mistakes, such as hair for heir, aunts for ants or storks for stalks. Minguillo’s narration is also very distinctive due to him being so malicious, spiteful and sadistic. Despite this, as a storyteller he’s clever and charming, which makes his parts of the novel very compelling as well as horribly disturbing.

The fifth narrator is Sor Loreta, a nun at the convent of Santa Catalina in Arequipa, Peru. Sor Loreta is a religious fanatic, convinced that she has been chosen by God and that she is on the path to sainthood. She despises anyone who stands in her way or tries to reason with her – and this includes the prioress, who believes Sor Loreta is deluded and insane. This storyline seems very separate from the others, particularly as it’s taking place in a completely different country, but they do all come together in the end!

You may be wondering about the title of the novel. Well, one of Minguillo’s interests is collecting books bound in human skin. Gruesome as it may sound, there really was a demand for these books, which peaked in the 19th century, and it’s not surprising that a character as wicked and cold-blooded as Minguillo would be drawn to a hobby like this.

Finally, I need to mention the historical note at the back of the book. It’s so long it’s practically a whole non-fiction book in its own right! Lovric tells us which characters were fictional and which were based on real people, before going into a lot of depth on various historical aspects of the book, particularly the history of Venetian and Peruvian nuns and what it was like to live in a convent. It’s much more detailed than you would usually expect an author’s note to be and it was very interesting to read.

As it turns out, this was the perfect time for me to read this book because a sequel, The Puffin, has recently been announced for publication in 2026. I was also interested to learn that one of the characters in the book, the painter Cecilia Cornaro, is the subject of one of Lovric’s earlier novels, Carnevale, so I’ll have to look for that one as well.

Manticory Swiney and her six sisters are born into poverty in rural 19th century Ireland and brought up by their mother, a laundress. They have never known their father (he visits once a year in the middle of the night) but from him they have inherited some very special gifts: their wonderful names and the abundance of long, thick hair which proves to be their route to fame and fortune. Bullied by the eldest sister, Darcy, into performing on the stage, the girls entertain their audiences by singing, dancing and, as a finale, unleashing their luxuriant cascades of ankle-length hair.

Approached by Augustus Rainfleury and Tristan Stoker, both of whom can see the money-making potential of seven long-haired sisters, the ‘Swiney Godivas’ leave their impoverished Harristown lives behind to find success in first Dublin then Venice. But for black-haired, sharp-tongued Darcy, the rival twins Berenice and Enda, quiet Pertilly, gentle, blonde Oona, wild Idolatry and our narrator, red-haired Manticory, fame doesn’t necessarily bring happiness.

I loved this book, the first I’ve read by Michelle Lovric, and I would agree that it really is a ‘splendid history’. It’s not quite a true one – Manticory and her sisters are fictional – but it was inspired by the story of the real-life Sutherland Sisters, an American family who really did become celebrities due to their long hair. If you have trouble imagining what seven sisters all with floor-length hair would look like, lots of pictures of the Seven Sutherland Sisters can be found online.

With so many Swineys to get to know, I was pleased to find that each sister is given a strong and distinctive personality of her own. I liked some of the girls and disliked others, but they were all great to read about, particularly the fierce, devilish Darcy who takes control of every scene in which she appears. One of my favourite characters, though, was not a Swiney sister at all, but their childhood enemy, Eileen O’Reilly (or the Eileen O’Reilly as she is always described) who enjoys exchanging very imaginative insults with Darcy – and who claims to hate the Swineys yet can’t seem to stay away from them.

Manticory herself has a wonderful narrative voice: strong, poetic and unmistakably ‘Irish’. She manages to bring a lot of humour into her ‘true and splendid history’ but it’s really a very dark story. There’s a vulnerability about the sisters, even Darcy, in that they are manipulated and taken advantage of by ruthless businessmen and men who are…well, attracted to girls with long hair. The Swineys are betrayed and exploited by the very people they have placed their trust in and what makes this even more tragic is that the reader can see this from the beginning while the sisters can’t.

Finally, I want to mention the excellent descriptive writing in this book. Every time Manticory thinks of her childhood in Harristown, County Kildare, she remembers the ‘turf stoves, thin geese and slow crows’ until Harristown becomes almost a character in itself. Later in the book, the descriptions of Venice are particularly beautiful…

The palazzi and churches let their fretted stones hang down into our faces like beautiful, insitent ghosts. Beckoning lanterns hung at arched water-gates. Inside their houses, equisitely dressed Venetians displayed themselves in glowing tableaux so that each palace seemed to host a puppet theatre performing just for us. The city was mystical and barbaric all at once, a floating fortress so delicate that the fairies would hesitate to place the weight of their wings on it.

I also loved the images of the girls hanging their hair from the windows of the bell tower of San Vidal like seven Rapunzels and each of them standing in the bow of a gondola with her hair trailing into the boat behind. I could tell this book was written by someone who knows and loves Venice!

The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters is one of my favourite books of the year so far and I’m now looking forward to investigating Michelle Lovric’s previous novels.

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