Where Do I Start?

It's difficult to know with whom to begin - I've read so many good writers this last year. I believe I'll start with one whose books remain more closely in my memory than most. Sarah Dunant's  books about the lives of three different young Italian women during the Renaissance fairly throb with the tension, repression and creative energy of an era which produced the likes of Da Vinci, Boticelli, Caravagio, Michaelangelo, Machiavelli, Bocaccio, the Medicis, Savanrola and the Borgias. The names themselves conjure up opulence, brilliance, depravity, cruelty and upheaval swathed in the golden hue of Italian sunlight.

Sared Hearts was the first of Dunant's that I read. I was sold on her after that and moved on to The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan after that.

In the 15th Century young noblewomen of marriagable age - sixteen in the case of Serafina around whom Sacred Hearts revolves - had two possible futures before them. They could marry a man chosen for them by their family or they could be sent to a convent. If they were not the pretty one or the dutiful one, but rebellious or too smart or one of too many sisters then they were literally sold to a convent with a bride's dowry. Therefore, they became "brides of Christ."  

Serafina was sold away in this manner when she had become too fond of an artist who painted a chapel on her father's premises. She came to the walls of convent Santa Caterina into the care of Suora Zuana, the dispensary mistress. Serafina raged and rebelled against her incarceration, throwing the peace of the convent into disorder and distress. This engaging and passionate young woman's story along with the story of the women who resided with her in Santa Caterina are thrown up against the turmoil of the Roman Catholic Church set on the brink of its own repression and rebellion.

In The Birth of Venus Alessa Cecchi isn't even fifteen when she is married off to a wealthy, older man of Florence. Alessa is a bright young woman who has a love for both learning and sketching. The story follows her through her particular passionate journey during the reign of the de Medicis in northern Italy. A time when the lifestyle of luxury, learning and brilliant art is threatened by the hellfire propounded by Savanarola. Alessa finds her very life and her passion for art at risk.

I mentioned earlier the sunlight of Italy. I've often wondered if possibly it was the sunlight, that particular angle upon the hills, fields, vineyards and seaports that nutures the passion that helps manifest such talented artists. I don't know. But I do know that when I visited Venice (way back in the middle 1960's when I was a young girl of sixteen) I didn't just see the sunlight, I felt it. I don't mean the warmth, I felt something else. It's aura? It's energy? I'm not sure what it is, but I felt it. I've never been anywhere else where the sunlight took on such a presence in itself.

I mention this because the third book of Dunant's that I read, In the Company of the Courtesan, is set in Venice. This Venice of the mid-sixteenth century was full of mystery, secrets and paradoxes.  Great beauty and great ugliness, the powerful and the disempowered live cheek by jowl amidst a city steeped (quite literally) in its own unique history.

The Courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, flee the sack of Rome to rebuild their enterprise in Venice. Together they navigate Venetian society to acquire the wealthy and notable patrons to support her. But it becomes a harrowing and painful learning experience for them both.

Bucino has become one of my favorite characters of late. Sharp-tongued, very intelligent and wise in what we would call "street smarts," I found myself more engaged in his story than Fiammetta's. He reminds me of George R.R. Martin's character Tyrion in the Song of Ice and Fire books.

Overall, I was totally drawn into the atmosphere of the Renaissance in all three books. Without a doubt Dunant has researched the era well, but craft of her words, a sort of polite lyrical quality that serves the era well, had me compelled to turn the page - like I wanted to know what the next stanza of the song would bring.

I recommend all three books to those interested in historical fiction and the Renaissance in particular.

Dunant's next book, Blood and Beauty, about the notorious Borgia family will be out in July of 2012.

Upcoming reviews:
Judith Merkle Riley's Margaret Ashbury novels
Robin Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles and
Jane Lindskold's Thirteen Orphans books

Bleeding Heart Square

It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. The holiday season bustle kept me busy and very soon I will be in the unenviable position, along with millions of other folks, of being unemployed. And that means without benefits and, well, at my age that’s a huge anxiety producer.

My escape - and my blessed joy - is reading. Reading keeps me sane. Truly. And these wonderful, exciting authors have brought balance to this auldanxiousannie.

I have four book reviews here for your perusal. I’ve been trying to come up with a linking theme for them all, but they are disparate not only in theme but place in time. The first is a mystery with a missing woman and a burgeoning fascist party complicating the life of a young upper-class woman separated from her beastly husband that takes place in 1930’s England, the second a rollicking, swashbuckling romance in Florida of the early 1800’s, the third a How-To for finding balance in our current global consciousness, and the fourth is the last in a beloved series about a wilderness family in upstate New York of the 1820s-30s.

*****

Bleeding Heart Square
by Andrew Taylor
Published by Hyperion
Copyright 2009

“It’s 1934, and the decaying London cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square is an unlikely place of refuge for aristocratic Lydia Langstone. But as she flees her abusive marriage, there is only one person she can turn to... Legend has it that the devil once danced in the square - but is there now a new and sinister presence lurking in its shadows?”
(from the back cover)

Perhaps it is just me, but does anyone else always envision the 1930s in black and white? I have a very difficult time adding color to that era in my mind. My parents were young people at that time and the pictures I have of them are in black and white. Films from that era that I watched and loved as a child (and now - I recently caught Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in “Only Angels Have Wings” on TMC) were in black and white. Black/White photos of the WPA at work during the Great Depression and Okies barely surviving in their tent villages. No color, and the images seem even more intense for the lack of it.

There’s a line in Taylor’s Bleeding Heart Square that perhaps gives us an explanation for this intense lack of color: “He had tried to write a description of her one evening but was unable to get much beyond a list of cliches.” Indeed. There are times when color becomes very limiting and shades of gray are the only way we have to define a thing. Taylor very accurately draws Lydia Langstone’s reserved personality and her cool approach to moving from a life of garish entitlement to living in those shades of gray.

I was fascinated and drawn in by this mystery of the waning of class distinctions, murder definitely most foul, rising fascism in the political miasma of 1930s Britain, and nascent love over kippers and a boiled egg at a neighborhood tea shop.

Miss Penhow’s letters and the unattributed comments regarding same kept the story going when, at times, I felt bogged down in what seemed like too many red herrings and coincidental characters thrown at me. However, all was satisfactorily tied up at the ending.

Definitely recommended to mystery and historical fiction lovers.

Swimming in the 19th Century

Once again, I’ve been remiss in posting anything here. It’s been an odd month. Many things have been happening - the election here in the US for one, a new pastor at the church where I work, the change of seasons, the illness of friends. Tension and anxiety have been rampant in the people around me, and, while I have not felt anxious directly in myself about any one thing, I’ve been hard put to not take on the anxiety of others. I’m weary and have not been able to put a decent sentence together to save my soul.

So, I’ve lost myself in reading. Thing is, I usually find myself in what I read, and so it has been this last month.

The beginning of October I was reading Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White.
“Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before.”

Faber follows the life of a young prostitute in Victorian England – her rise from the streets to mistress of a wealthy perfume manufacturer. It is a fascinating, powerful, explicit, gritty and depressing book. When I finished it, I felt the need to immerse myself in the laughter and innocence of the preschool children at the church. There aren’t many books that have affected me so.

I’ve read many books dealing with the struggle for women’s rights in the 19th century. In fact, the books I read after this one dealt with that theme, as well. But the sheer hopelessness of a London street prostitute to rise above, let alone stay alive… This book made me count my blessings I was born mid 20th century.

The next book I picked up was Geraldine Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize winning March. I do love Brooks’ writing. Earlier this year I read People of the Book that told the stories of both a young woman who restored manuscripts and the book that was her project to restore – the fictional Sarajevo Haggadah. It is an exquisite intertwining of her story and the history of a Jewish text.

March was a surprise. If you’re a reader, I’m sure you have wondered and “what-iffed” about what happened to a character after the story that was told. Brooks takes the character of Mr. March, the father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women who was pretty much a behind the scenes character until the end of that book, and tells his story during the year he was away from his family serving as a chaplain to Union soldiers in the Civil War.

While in Little Women we see him as the returning hero, loved by wife and family. March shows us the struggle, the doubts, the anguish of an idealistic, abolitionist, dreamer amid the horrors of an incredibly brutal war. No hero is without his weaknesses, and Mr. March is drawn in Technicolor in that regard. We also see Marmee, his wife, in more dimension than Little Women’s perfect mother picture. There are times in the book when I would have liked to give each of them a good shaking, but I realized that was my 21st century morals and attitudes judging characters in the 19th century. This is what makes Brooks’ writing in March so remarkable to me. She unapologetically and skillfully does not judge her characters or manipulate them beyond the culture of their era.

For some reason only the gods know, I seem to be stuck in the 19th century. I had no idea when I ordered my copies of Wild Swan, Swan’s Chance, and Season of the Swans by Celeste Deblasis that they would take me through that century with the Carrington-Falconer family. Someone had recommended Wild Swan on a forum I frequent and, well, I have a thing for swans, so I ordered them. Silly reason, but there you are.

These books were published in the 1980s and 90s. Celeste Deblasis passed away from cancer in 2001. I suppose they are categorized as historical romantic fiction. The emphasis is indeed on the relationships of the main characters, many main characters. This is a sweeping history of a prolific family from the early part of the century to the end. Alexandra Thaine Carrington Falconer is the driving force of the family and the focus of the books. Wild Swan moves with her from childhood in England to her immigration to Maryland where, with her first husband, St. John Carrington, she builds a farm for the raising of Thoroughbred racing horses. I will not give you much of the story here, as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who decides to read the books.

At first I was annoyed at how much exposition there was in these books. We get history lessons through them all. But these were written in a different style, a different decade, when exposition was not as frowned upon as it is today. 23 years does make a difference. And the characters are very much a part of the history that surrounds them, so it felt more natural as I continued through the trilogy.

Swans. During a difficult time in my life I lived for a month at my cousin’s summer lake cottage. It was my grandparents’ cottage when I was a child and I spent idyllic, sun-warmed summers with them there. Now it is a run-down sort of place, kept together with love and Mr. Fix-it efforts by my cousin. By all rights it should be torn down and replaced, but my cousin just can’t bring himself to let go of it. It is a magic place, not just because it holds the loving spirits of our grandparents and memories of our youth, but it is an untouched oasis amid busy suburban rush. There are deer, fox, ducks, birds of all kinds, squirrels, ground hogs, frogs, turtles, fish….and swans. My cousin tells me there are three species of swans on the lake. I don’t know about that, but I will forever remember the family of mute swans that frequented the channel in front of the cottage every morning I was there – a male, female and three fuzzy, dustmop cygnets. Watching them feed on the duckweed in the channel every morning, parents herding and directing their young ones, brought me a peace and confidence that all was as it should be.

Alex Falconer finds the same peace and solidity in the migration of swans first in England’s west country and then the Chesapeake Bay. Swans are fiercely dedicated to and protective of mate and family. They mate for life, unless their partner dies, of course. Alex is a swan.

I don’t know what century I will venture into next. I’m not sure I’m done with the 19th yet. We’ll see what comes.