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Loading... The Birth of Venusby Sarah Dunant
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 1   melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  I loved this book! (  ) BoomChick | Oct 13, 2009 | I own a Dutch translation of the book made by Tinke Davids. I must stay it is utterly awful. There are a plethora of annoying mistakes and some sentences do not work very well due to wording. It was like reading a ten year old's essay. Poorly constructed sentences, not an agreeable read on a technical level. I don't know if the original text gives off the same vibe, but it was quite frankly a very boring read. Entire passages didn't seem to get a move on, a lot of things were unnecessarily stretched out. Even the so-called 'intelligent' conversations were steeped in banality. I'd recommend The Agony and the Ecstasy by Stone well above this one if you want to read fiction on Florence set in the Savonarola/Medici age. (  ) MissusB | Oct 13, 2009 | Once again, Sarah Dunant spins a masterful tale of life long ago, starting in Florence in the 1480’s. We enter the life of Alessandra Cecchi, a 14 year old girl who is sadly, too developed for her time. She loves to learn, speaks multiple languages, has no talent for dancing, and above all, she loves art. Alessandra has inherited her love of color from her father, a clothing merchant renowned for his vibrant cloths and she yearns for the secret of color. While most young women learn to sew and prepare to be mothers, Alessandra sketches scenes from the bible and other images she can conjure up in her mind. She yearns to explore the beautiful city she lives in, to feel what it must be like to be a man in a time of great change, both politically and culturally. To read the rest of my review, please visit: http://www.dorolerium.com/?p=675 (  ) dorolerium | Sep 26, 2009 | The story takes place in 15th century Florence when Italy's decadent ways are starting to become a little too flamboyant for the church. Alessandra Cecchi is the 14-year old daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant who is starting to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. To make things more difficult, she also has a passion for drawing and painting during a time when women weren't particularly allowed to become artists. Into the Cecchi household comes a young painter from the North who's hired to do the frescoes for the household's chapel. Of course Alessandra is fascinated by the new painter. Alessandra is soon faced with the role of womanhood which in that day and age is either marriage or the convent. I thought this was a good read but it wasn't anything amazing. Maybe because 15th century Italy has been done in so many different ways in many different stories. I do like the interspersion of the Medici family and the fanatical monk Savonarola who tries to clean up the city a little too fervently. I did like Alessandra and loved her spunk. Sometimes some of the characters and their language were, I thought, unnecessarily crude. However, the beginning of the book drew you into the story and while the ending wasn't an impossible happily-ever-after...it did leave you somewhat satisfied. (  )1 nycbookgirl | Sep 16, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0812968972, Paperback)Sarah Dunant's gorgeous and mesmerizing novel, Birth of Venus, draws readers into a turbulent 15th-century Florence, a time when the lavish city, steeped in years of Medici family luxury, is suddenly besieged by plague, threat of invasion, and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk. Dunant masterfully blends fact and fiction, seamlessly interweaving Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of a spirited 14-year-old girl. As Florence struggles in Savonarola's grip, a serial killer stalks the streets, the French invaders creep closer, and young Alessandra Cecchi must surrender her "childish" dreams and navigate her way into womanhood. Readers are quickly seduced by the simplicity of her unconventional passions that are more artistic than domestic:
Dancing is one of the many things I should be good at that I am not. Unlike my sister. Plautilla can move across the floor like water and sing a stave of music like a song bird, while I, who can translate both Latin and Greek faster than she or my brothers can read it, have club feet on the dance floor and a voice like a crow. Though I swear if I were to paint the scale I could do it in a flash: shining gold leaf for the top notes falling through ochres and reds into hot purple and deepest blue. Alessandra's story, though central, is only one part of this multi-faceted and complex historical novel. Dunant paints a fascinating array of women onto her dark canvas, each representing the various fates of early Renaissance women: Alessandra's lovely (if simple) sister Plautilla is interested only in marrying rich and presiding over a household; the brave Erila, Alessandra's North African servant (and willing accomplice) has such a frank understanding of the limitations of her sex that she often escapes them; and Signora Cecchi, Alessandra's beautiful but weary mother tries to encourage yet temper the passions of her wayward daughter. A luminous and lush novel, The Birth of Venus, at its heart, is a mysterious and sensual story with razor-sharp teeth. Like Alessandra, Dunant has a painter's eye--her writing is rich and evocative, luxuriating in colors and textures of the city, the people, and the art of 15th-century Florence. Reminiscent of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, but with sensual splashes of color and the occasional thrill of fear, Dunant's novel is both exciting and enchanting. --Daphne Durham (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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This is an extremely passionate and graphic book. Everything is described in vivid detail, from the violence to the sex to the art. If you can handle the mental images, this is a marvelously written story. Alessandra is a believable and sympathetic narrator, progressive and intelligent without being anachronistic. The story is compelling, sometimes suspenseful, often thought-provoking. There were times when I had a lot of trouble putting it down. I will definitely be looking up Dunant's other works. (