Sacred Hearts (original 2009; edition 2009)

Each time I picked up Sacred Hearts and read it I felt like I was entering into the quiet hallways of a convent. While the plot of this book has it's fill of drama and conflict, the portrayal of the nuns in the convent was such that you get a full picture of what their daily life is like with its routine and stability.

I have often wondered what it would have been like to be a nun, in any era, but somehow I had never really given any thought to those nuns who were forced into convents. It is something that is so alien to our culture today, that it is hard for me to grasp how the nuns could accept, and even come to love their place in the convents.

Sacred Hearts addresses the issue of nuns unwillingly joining the convent of Santa Caterina from two perspectives. Zuana is a middle-aged nun who was forced into the convent when she was a girl because her father died, leaving her alone in the world. The other perspective is that of Serafina, a young lady who is livid about being taken away from her lover and forced into the convent. However, she has a very large dowry, and that means that the convent has every incentive to keep her there.

Through Zuana's story we see a woman who was educated in medicine by her father (who was a doctor). Although she wouldn't have volunteered to live in the convent, she is allowed to take on the role of healer for the nuns, using her skills in ways that normally would not have been allowed to a woman in the sixteenth century. When Serafina arrives, however, Zuana is reminded of her own lost hopes and dreams.

Serafina, on the other hand, has determined that she will never adjust to life in the convent. The tension builds as you begin to wonder if what she is going through is part of the normal adjustment process, or if Serafina is strong enough, willful enough and lucky enough to find a way out of the convent.

A lot of the book is related through the thoughts and memories of both Zuana and Serafina. This can make the book seem very quiet and introspective, but I think it works well with the story considering that the nuns were not supposed to speak out loud except in certain circumstances.

The best thing about this novel was the way it enveloped me while I was reading. The world around me slipped away, and I felt like I was living inside the story. Even more than that though, the individual nuns' personalities are fascinating, and their interactions via convent meetings or in their nuanced political struggles for power were very entertaining. These power struggles highlight the fact that the nuns were people just like everyone else, and so they faced the same struggles and weaknesses as those outside of the convent.

I recommend this novel to those who enjoy historical fiction, and anyone interested in the intricacies of convent life. ( )

Finished it last night and I am sorry that I am done. Loved it.
Wow. Some people complain that the book starts slow but I did not mind. The story telling captivated me from the get go. I am glad I have found a great historical fiction book again but now I want to read more.


Sarah Dunant is a master story teller. I love the way she makes us understand the different characters in the book. Good and bad and the suspense. At the end I was really reading so fast. Could not put it down, had to know what would happen. Highly recommend. ( )

The church was long considered a profession rather than a calling and those who entered into service to it were not necessarily called there by God or because of their piety and spirituality. And although this was true for men, especially those who were not likely to inherit from their fathers, it was doubly true for women, sent off to a convent for a multitude of reasons that had nothing to do with religion. Even Shakespeare wrote "Get thee to a nunnery" in Hamlet, when Hamlet exhorts Ophelia to give up thoughts of marrying him. And for many young women without marriage prospects, those who had sinned against society's mores, the not quite mentally intact, the physically imperfect, and those whose families didn't have the funds or inclination to offer them a dowry, the nunnery was in fact where they ended up, often times against their will. In Sarah Dunant's novel Sacred Hearts, Serafina, the newest novice in Santa Caterina, rages against her fate, incarcerated by her family, forever punished for her "crime," trapped and desperate. Unlike many of the others who have unwillingly gone before her though, she is combustible and wily enough to affect the convent and all who live within its walls even as the convent faces the changes and tightening up within the church that governs it.


Told from two perspectives, that of the angry and bitter novice Serafina and the calm and soothing Suora Zuana, the dispensary mistress, this novel charts the course of a very young woman fighting tooth and nail against her family's draconian but completely acceptable solution to her disobedience. There are various reasons the young novice ended up at Santa Caterina outside the city of Ferrara rather than closer to home, not least of which is that she has the voice of an angel and this particular convent is famed for its singing and performances. But she fights so hard when she first arrives that Zuana must be called to calm her through herbal intervention. Despite herself, this learned Sister is fascinated by the strength and vehemence she finds in Serafina's resistance to her unequivocal fate and her faith that she can in fact escape the life to which she's been doomed.


Assigned to assist Suora Zuana in the dispensary until she regains her voice after her screaming fits, Serafina shows quick intelligence, skill, and a facility for observation that all suggest she has an impressive and agile mind. And that fact alone makes her determined rebellion that much more dangerous to the already fracturing equilibrium inside the cloister's thick walls. As Zuana comes to know Serafina, she reflects on her own entrance into the convent, the loss of her own hopes and dreams, and ultimately the compensations she came to accept and appreciate once she was allowed to put her father's medical training into practice in the dispensary. But her own past also allows her to sympathize with Serafina's reaction to the total restriction into which she's been thrust and the anguish she feels at the loss of her lover. And it is this understanding and compassion from Zuana which drives the story and keeps the reader questioning what Serafina's ultimate fate will be.


Dunant has captured very well the outward serenity and unchanging routine of a 16th century Italian convent even as it roils with its own internal political intrigue mirroring the politics of the church and the secular world outside its walls despite the supposed almost complete sequestering of its inhabitants. She has drawn young Serafina as realistically willfull and quietly scheming but still incredibly sympathetic. The reader feels her visceral reaction to her fate and the way in which she rages against it. And Suora Zuana is a poignant, accepting character, yet strong and intutitive and fully congnizant of the impact Serafina's presence, either as a desperately unhappy novice or as one devoutly pious and searching for the light in God, has on all the other nuns and novices living in Santa Caterina. Dunant has beautifully captured a tale of trust and betrayal, of women's options, of love and loyalty, and of sacrifice. The story is slow but mesmerizing, thoroughly researched and completely captivating. The best sort of historical fiction. ( )

Really 2-and-a-half stars. ( )

For writers: nice example to analyse the roles characters play in a story: who is the focal point or catalyst, who is the antagonist, who evolves, and so on. Each of these positions is not always the POV character in a scene; is the narrator necessarily the protagonist? ( )