An age of cruelty and fear is the truth. Both of these women are doomed by circumstance. F is headstrong & greedy and her affair with the priest starts innocently and ends in abrupt disaster – betrayed by her own sister. I can see her smug face now as she watches F being taken away by the white hoods. ML is the queen and she could have flexed her muscles if she had any. She doesn’t though and is bullied by the queen mother into playing second fiddle. Her life is so unbearable to her that she gets an illicit supply of laudanum which she uses to get through her days and her nights with the King.

The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that the story seemed to be told by F – even the parts about the Queen. How did she know all that?? About the Queen’s letters from her mother being taken by the Queen Mother before they can get to ML. How did she know that the Queen faked miscarriages on 3 separate occasions? How did F know about the dwarf and how he helped her?

The 2 women did have one tenuous thread tying their lives together. F’s mother went out to be a wet-nurse to the King. F’s father’s silkworm farming failed & her mother was forced to do this. Unfortunately the King was 8 years old at the time and still took milk from the breast and couldn’t walk!! In his adult life he at human milk-sopped bread and ML was nauseous every time she had to dine with him.

We are never told what happens to F. She was sentenced to life in prison. Considering the pain of losing her son, this didn’t seem like too much for her. The burning and the rack and the torture of tying your arms behind your back & then dropping you down from a great height. None of it seemed to touch her. She went away in her mind and would say anything they wanted her to say. Oh yeah – the torturers kept asking her about her mother and whether or not she ate babies. This was never really explained. Oh well.

The Poison of religious intolerance meets, well, actual poison...the beauty of Ms. Harrison's prose makes the experience(s) less painful ( )

POISON, the explosive period novel by Kathryn Harrison, tells in elegant prose the intertwined stories of Francisca de Luarca and Queen Marie Louise of Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. Francisca, a young woman and a daring dreamer, describes her passionate love affair with the village priest, Father Alvaro, who teaches her both to read and to love. The novel also explores Francisca's tumultuous relationship with the sister who ultimately betrays her, and the girls' bond with their deceased mother. Queen Marie Louise is wed to an impotent king, in a time when strong women are suspect and those in power highly vulnerable. The novel seamlessly weaves through time and place to tell the stories of remarkable women and those who touch their lives and shape their destinies. Highly recommended.

Jenna Kim ( )