A stirring and emotionally resonant portrait of a pivotal relationship in the life of Michelangelo.
When poet Vittoria Colonna meets Michelangelo, they discover a deep and profound connection in this historical novel.
Michelangelo is revered for his sculptures and paintings, and by 1534, his reputation is unparalleled. Summoned to Rome by Pope Clement VII, the artist prepares to work on the pontiff’s legacy, the Last Judgment, a fresco depicting the second coming of Jesus. One afternoon, Michelangelo encounters a woman with a face that “suggests an intimacy with anguish.” The striking woman is Colonna, a poet and widow of military leader Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos. Thoughtful and brilliant, she was raised on the island of Ischia by Ferrante’s aunt, Costanza d’Avalos. Colonna’s marriage to Ferrante cemented a political alliance between her family and King Ferdinand of Spain. Since Ferrante’s death, Colonna has lived in seclusion, writing poetry and preserving her husband’s legacy. She is reluctant to rejoin society until a monk asks her to travel to Rome and advocate for the Capuchin order. Michelangelo admires Colonna and her poetry, and he asks for her advice interpreting the imagery in the Last Judgment. From this collaboration, an enduring and loving bond develops between Colonna and Michelangelo that sustains them through ongoing political and religious conflicts and personal tragedy. Cardillo’s (Island Legacy, 2017, etc.) latest book is a sweeping historical epic and a sensitively observed exploration of the passionate friendship between Colonna and Michelangelo. At one point the poet muses: “Michelangelo’s conversational style is like that of a surgeon with a knife about to slit open my chest to observe my beating heart. I am both fascinated and terrified by his questions.” Ambitious in scope, the narrative covers 1500 to 1547, shifting between their relationship and Colonna’s childhood and adolescence on the island of Ischia, her marriage to Ferrante and his betrayal of her trust, and her development as a poet. While Colonna and Michelangelo’s friendship forms the emotional center of the novel, the poet’s story and her journey as a woman and a writer are dynamic and multilayered. The author also does a fine job exploring the religious views that inform Colonna’s and Michelangelo’s lives and works as well as the tension between the Roman Catholic Church and the writers and clergy who seek to reform it.
A stirring and emotionally resonant portrait of a pivotal relationship in the life of Michelangelo.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-942209-54-6
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Bellastoria Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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