Tag: Natasha Solomons

Cleopatra by Natasha Solomons

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This is a novel about Cleopatra, as you’ll have already guessed from the title and cover! Beginning with a visit to Rome with her father – the first time Cleopatra, then thirteen, has ever left Egypt – and ending just after the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, it’s a retelling of the life of one of history’s most famous women.

Although I love history and historical fiction, Cleopatra is not one of the historical figures I have a particular interest in and I haven’t read a lot of factual information about her. This means I can’t really comment on the accuracy of the book or how the choices Solomons makes on what to cover or not cover compare with choices made by other authors. Purely as a work of fiction, I found it quite enjoyable, especially the parts of the book dealing with Cleopatra’s personal life – her friendship with her beloved servant, Charmian; the development of her relationship with Caesar; and the birth of her son, Caesarion (depicted here as Caesar’s child). Solomons also delves into the politics of the period, the shifting allegiances and power struggles and the changing dynamics between Egypt and Rome. I found some of this a bit difficult to follow and I think including dates at the start of the chapters may have helped me keep track of the passing of time.

The novel is narrated mainly by Cleopatra herself, which allows us a lot of insight into what she is like as a mother, lover, sister and friend. However, there are also some chapters narrated by another woman: Servilia, sister of Cato the Younger and a mistress of Caesar’s (as well as the mother of his eventual assassin, Brutus). There weren’t enough of these chapters for me to fully connect with Servilia on an emotional level, but seeing things from her point of view did provide a very different (and more negative) impression of Cleopatra. I can understand why Solomons chose Servilia, but it would have been interesting if she had also written from other perspectives such as Charmian’s or maybe one of Cleopatra’s brothers and sisters.

The novel ends soon after Caesar’s death, leaving a lot of Cleopatra’s story still untold – her relationship with Mark Antony and the events leading to her suicide, for example. I haven’t seen any indication that there’s going to be a sequel, but there would definitely be enough material for one. Maybe Natasha Solomons will move on to something else for her next book, though; her previous work has included a novel narrated by the Mona Lisa, a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, and a saga about a wealthy banking family, so clearly she likes to write about a wide range of topics and characters!

Thanks to Manilla Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons

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Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

If you’ve read or seen Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, you’ll remember Rosaline as the girl Romeo was infatuated with before meeting and falling in love with Juliet. We never actually meet Rosaline in the text of the play but her role is still important because she is the reason why Romeo attends the Capulet ball where he sees Juliet for the first time. In Natasha Solomons’ new novel, she gives Rosaline a voice of her own and tells the story of her relationship with Romeo Montague.

Rather than a simple retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Fair Rosaline is what the publisher has described as a ‘subversive, powerful untelling’. It wasn’t really what I had been expecting and I was quite surprised by the way Solomons chose to approach this novel.

First of all, as Shakespeare provides us with almost no information on Rosaline’s appearance and personality, Solomons has taken inspiration from some of his other characters with a similar name – Rosalind in As You Like It and Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost – so that the woman we meet at the beginning of Fair Rosaline is a fully formed character. We join her just after the death of her mother, Emelia Capulet, when her father informs her that she is going to be sent to a nunnery. The horrified Rosaline suspects that he just wants to avoid having to pay a dowry if she marries, but he insists that it was actually her mother’s dying wish.

Granted a twelve day reprieve before being sent to join the nuns, Rosaline is determined to make the most of her last days of freedom. When she meets Romeo Montague and falls in love, she begins to hope that there’s still a chance of a happier future – until she makes a shocking discovery about him and breaks off their relationship. However, it seems that Romeo has turned his attentions to her younger, more vulnerable cousin Juliet. Can Rosaline save Juliet or will she be unable to prevent things from ending in tragedy?

I’ve always loved Romeo and Juliet – it contains some of the most beautiful language in all of Shakespeare’s work – and I’ve never questioned its position as one of the greatest tragic love stories of all time. Fair Rosaline, though, looks at the play through a completely different lens. Here, Romeo is not a romantic hero but a villain, a sexual predator who targets young girls and discards them when he loses interest in them. Solomons uses Juliet’s extreme youth (thirteen in the play) and the fact that Romeo’s exact age is not given, to suggest that he is an older man than we usually assume and to give their relationship a much darker tone than in the play. I think how much you’ll enjoy this book will depend on how much you can accept this new version of Romeo. Personally, I prefer characters in retellings to at least bear some resemblance to the originals and this Romeo didn’t, which was a big problem for me.

I’ve loved some of Natasha Solomons’ previous novels, particularly House of Gold and The Novel in the Viola, so I’m sorry I didn’t enjoy this one more. There were plenty of things I liked, such as the portrayal of Tybalt, who is also quite different from Shakespeare’s depiction – he is still the proud, impetuous and hot-tempered character we know, but seeing him through the eyes of his cousin Rosaline makes him much more sympathetic. I also found the setting interesting; as Solomons explains in her author’s note, there’s no evidence that Shakespeare ever visited Italy so she tried to capture the same feel, writing about Italy as though she had never been there and blending 14th century Verona with the Elizabethan England that would have been familiar to Shakespeare. I just wish she could have found a way to create a story for Rosaline and explore the difficulties facing medieval women without completely destroying Romeo’s character in the process.

Have you read any good retellings of Romeo and Juliet? O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell is another that left me slightly disappointed, so I would be interested in any other recommendations.

Thanks to Manilla Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 10/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

This is book 32/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons

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Many of us will, on a trip to Paris, have stood in the Louvre in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. We may also know some of the details of the painting’s history – its creation in Renaissance Italy, its theft from the Louvre in 1911. However, this new novel by Natasha Solomons adds a whole new dimension to the Mona Lisa story, taking us inside the mind of the painting itself and showing us the world through the eyes that look out from the portrait. Whether or not you enjoy this book will probably depend on whether you can accept that a painting is narrating the story. If you’re happy with that idea, then I think you’ll find I, Mona Lisa an interesting and entertaining read.

Most of the novel is set in 16th century Florence, during the period when Leonardo is working on his most famous masterpiece. From the painting’s own perspective, we get to know some real historical figures such as Lisa del Giocondo, the woman who sits for the portrait; Michelangelo and Raphael, da Vinci’s rivals; Niccolò Machiavelli, who approaches da Vinci with a scheme to divert the Arno River; and Salaì, a student in Leonardo’s workshop who is jealous of his master’s relationship with Mona Lisa. Although Mona is an inanimate object, she is portrayed in the novel as having the thoughts and feelings of a real woman, with an emotional attachment to her creator Leonardo.

When Leonardo eventually dies, leaving her vulnerable and unprotected, Mona embarks on the journey that will lead her to France. As the centuries go by, she spends time at the court of the Sun King in Fontainebleau and then at Versailles during the French Revolution, before finding her way to the Louvre where, as the 20th century dawns, she forms a new friendship with another great artist.

I, Mona Lisa is an unusual novel and a unique way of exploring some key moments in history. However, because so much time is spent in Renaissance Italy, the parts of the novel set in France feel more rushed and the characters less well developed. This was maybe the author’s intention, as Mona finds it difficult to bond with the people she meets after Leonardo’s death and makes it clear that her heart will always be in Florence, but it also meant that I felt less engaged with these sections of the book.

I do think that if you’re going to write a book about a painting with human emotions, the Mona Lisa is a perfect choice as it’s such a realistic and iconic portrait. The Mona of the novel is obviously very limited in what she can see and experience (and with whom she can communicate – just Leonardo and a handful of other painters and paintings), but Natasha Solomons does a great job of bringing Mona and her world to life. This is the third of her books I’ve read – the others are The Novel in the Viola and House of Gold. Three very different books, but I would recommend any or all of them.

Thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 4/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

House of Gold by Natasha Solomons

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It’s been a long time since I read my first Natasha Solomons book, The Novel in the Viola. Although I enjoyed it, for some inexplicable reason I had never really thought about reading any of her other books until I spotted her new one, House of Gold, which was published in the UK last month. I think it was the simple, elegant cover that caught my attention, at a time when covers in general are becoming increasingly intricate and brightly coloured, but the story sounded appealing too…and it was. I loved it.

House of Gold tells the story of a fictional banking family, the Goldbaums, who are loosely based on the real-life Rothschilds. When we first meet the family in 1911, they are fabulously wealthy and hugely influential, with branches in five European capital cities. In a move intended to strengthen the ties between the Austrian and the British branches, a marriage has been arranged between Greta Goldbaum and her cousin Albert. This is nothing new – Greta has grown up with the knowledge that “the Goldbaum men were bankers, while the Goldbaum women married Goldbaum men and produced Goldbaum children”, but she has no desire to marry Albert and is sure they won’t be compatible. Of course, the wedding must go ahead anyway and Greta is forced to leave her parents’ home in Vienna to start a new life as a married woman in England.

The relationship between Greta and Albert is at the heart of the novel and I enjoyed watching them get to know each other, trying each in their own way to make their marriage work but not always succeeding. It’s not always easy, especially not for Greta, but even when things are at their worst she finds some fulfilment in transforming the gardens of Temple Court, the British Goldbaums’ estate in Hampshire, and as a result of taking on new responsibilities and developing new interests, she is able to grow as a person.

There is much more to the novel than this, though. Within a few short years of Greta’s marriage to Albert, the First World War begins, bringing with it new challenges, new difficulties but also new opportunities. With European governments desperate for money to fund their war efforts, the services of the Goldbaums are as much in demand as ever, but as a Jewish family they find that their position is no longer as secure as it has been in the past. For Greta, there is the additional problem of being stuck in the middle, with different branches of her family on opposite sides of the conflict.

Natasha Solomons takes us right to the centre of the action, with characters such as Greta’s beloved brother Otto and her French cousin Henri becoming directly caught up in the war that is tearing Europe apart. We also learn a lot about the role of money in war; to quote Otto, “Money has no passport and every passport…it has little respect for borders. Money, like water, finds a way.”

There’s so much going on in this novel…so many characters to meet and so many interesting stories to follow. Maybe that’s why, after being completely gripped by the lives and adventures of the Goldbaums, I was slightly disappointed by the unexpectedly abrupt ending and by subplots which seemed to lack a proper resolution. I hope that means Natasha Solomons might be planning a sequel. It would certainly be possible, but if not I will just have to go back and read her earlier novels. I have Mr Rosenblum’s List, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands and The Song Collector to choose from.

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons

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I love reading fiction set during World War II and The Novel in the Viola is one of the best I’ve read for a while. The story begins in 1938 when we meet nineteen-year-old Elise Landau, a girl from a rich Austrian family (her mother, Anna, is a successful opera singer and her father, Julian, a famous author). Until now, Elise has lead a secure and comfortable life but that’s all about to change because the Landaus are Jews, and with Europe on the brink of war Austria is no longer a safe place to live. And so Elise is sent away from her home in Vienna and travels alone to Tyneford House, a mansion on the south coast of England, where she will work as a maid for Mr Rivers and his son, Kit. Her parents have remained in Austria while they await American visas and they promise to send for Elise as soon as possible – but as the war continues, she begins to wonder if they’ll ever be reunited.

The portrayal of life in an English country house forms a big part of the story, with insights into the class system, social conventions of the time, and the relationships between servant and master. Elise has to get used to working as a parlour maid after spending most of her life having servants of her own. Her background makes it difficult for her to fit in with the other servants at Tyneford but her status as a maid and a Jewish refugee prevents her from being accepted by some of the Rivers’ upper class friends. Elise is a wonderful character and I enjoyed following her as she settled into her new life – I thought Natasha Solomons displayed a real understanding of what it was like to be newly arrived in an unfamiliar country, feeling homesick and struggling with the language and the culture.

There are lots of beautiful, atmospheric descriptions of the Dorset countryside and coast which gave me a true feel of what it was like to live there during the Second World War. The story also looks at the effects the war had on the village of Tyneford and the house itself. The author’s note at the end of the book was very interesting and explained how Tyneford was based on a real place that became a ghost town because of the war.

There are so many other things I could say about this book – there’s the secret of the ‘novel in the viola’ itself, and I haven’t even mentioned yet the romantic storyline which develops as Elise begins to fall in love with someone she meets at Tyneford. But I don’t want to spoil this book for you, so I’ll just say that The Novel in the Viola was a real pleasure to read, a great story with just the right balance of sadness and humour. And I thought the way the book ended was perfect – the only problem was that I had grown to care for Elise and the others so much I didn’t want to leave them behind.