by Sarah Dunant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 2006
Rich, rewarding and wonderfully well-crafted entertainment.
Another tale of Renaissance Italy from Dunant (The Birth of Venus, 2003, etc.), this time replacing the art of painting with the art of seduction.
The story begins in 1527 with the sack of Rome by (irony of ironies) the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. While her neighbors barricade themselves inside their homes, Fiammetta Bianchini tells her cook to prepare a feast, gets dressed up and throws open her doors to the soldiers overturning her city, hoping that charm and hospitality will subdue invaders bent on rape and pillage. This bravura performance sets the stage for a drama that delights and dazzles from first page to last. Smart, witty and fearless, the delightful heroine is joined by an equally engaging cast of supporting characters. First among them is the dwarf Bucino, Fiammetta’s business partner and closest friend. He’s also the novel’s narrator and, when he and his mistress move their operations to Venice, the reader’s escort in the city. Bucino is an ideal guide, keen-eyed and sharp-witted, and the fact that he’s a newcomer to La Serenissima ably serves the larger purposes of this intelligently structured text. The reader learns Venice’s secrets as he does, and Dunant avoids the leaden exposition so common in historical fiction. She lets the life stories of Fiammetta and Bucino unfurl just as organically. Her captivating prose is restrained but eloquent, with flashes of pure poetry. Dunant uses language that feels antique without seeming ridiculous, and she treats the past as a real place rather than an amusement park. She never lets the reader forget that her Venice is a 16th-century city, offering just the right mix of raw sewage and gold-domed cathedrals, but she also makes it convincingly modern: truly cosmopolitan, ruled by commerce and gossip. It’s the perfect setting for an enterprising whore, a resourceful dwarf and a story of love and intrigue.
Rich, rewarding and wonderfully well-crafted entertainment.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6381-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Amor Towles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
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Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility (2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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