An entertaining and educational work, from a scholar of ancient history whose work always comes across to me like lectures from “the fun professor”: sAn entertaining and educational work, from a scholar of ancient history whose work always comes across to me like lectures from “the fun professor”: someone deeply versed in scholarship but with a delivery that is hip, irreverent, and opinionated. The British title is “A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women” and that’s more representative of its contents, though less allusive, than the American one, “A Rome Of One’s Own” (although over a third of the book is set before Rome became an empire). The chapters each focus on a different woman (or two) and a different period in history, so for me, something to read a chapter at a time rather than blow through all at once.
Happily, I learned a fair bit about Roman history from this. The women profiled are diverse, and other than Boudicca (because no one can resist writing about Boudicca) were ones I hadn’t heard of before. The book moves from examination of the roles of women in Rome’s foundation myths; to the formerly enslaved woman who wound up giving information that brought down the cult of Dionysus, all in an effort to save her boyfriend from his malicious mom; to a businesswoman in Pompei, officers’ wives at the forts along Hadrian’s Wall, a highborn court poet, an early Christian martyr. There are women at the peak of political power, too: I especially enjoyed reading about Augustus’s daughter Julia Caesar, whose restricted upbringing ultimately turned into rebellion, and Julia Maesa, a Syrian woman whose sister married an officer who later became emperor, and who then fought successfully to get her two successive grandsons on the throne. There were some real Machiavellian moves there, but she seems to have been popular, and I’d love to read a novel about her if anybody could write a good one.
In the end, I definitely enjoyed this and found it well worth reading, as well as sometimes humorous. Too much of this author’s voice would probably begin to grate, but in small doses it is excellent, and a great way to learn more about Roman history....more
Wow, this was disappointing. I’d been seeking a readable, secular history of the Catholic Church for years, and while this is readable, secular and a Wow, this was disappointing. I’d been seeking a readable, secular history of the Catholic Church for years, and while this is readable, secular and a history, it has almost nothing else going for it. It’s an endless series of summaries of the political careers of popes, lacking a thesis, analysis or context, and with a very British Empire ethos.
In fairness, I don’t think it was even intended as a history of the church; it’s about the popes and only the popes, stringing together hundreds of summaries of papacies like endless beads. It zips through the first 500 years of Christianity in 25 pages, understandably since the leaders in Rome didn’t even claim to be popes for the first 400 (and learning that Peter was not in fact Bishop of Rome, and it’s only legends that have him even visiting, was interesting). It gets through the year 1000 by page 92. After that it has something to say about the reign of every single pope through Benedict XVI.
I use the word “reign” deliberately, as the behavior of the popes, up through losing their territory in the Papal States in the unification of Italy in 1870, seems little different from that of secular princes. It’s a distasteful chronicle of popes allying themselves with various kings against other kings, going to war for territory, and transparently using excommunication and interdict as political weapons against their enemies, or even just petty rivals. Not to mention assorted sexual misconduct and using the papacy to enrich their own families.
But this political behavior appears to be the only aspect of the papacy to interest the author. Throughout the Middle Ages, for instance, the book is laser-focused on the papacy’s diplomatic relations, particularly with the Holy Roman Empire, and all of the many occasions on which the succession was disputed and claimants fought each other for the papacy. Some of the more modern sections go on for pages describing wars in Europe while barely mentioning the popes. In other words, this book is very much your standard political/military/diplomatic history. There’s almost no attention to social and cultural context, and very little to religion. Major threads in the history of the church—for instance, clerical celibacy, reform movements—appear only when a pope does something notable in relation to them, but are otherwise ignored, leaving no sense of their development in the broader picture.
And perhaps because so much time is covered, and the author is trying to stuff in details of so many papacies, there’s no real context provided for anything. I wound up with the sense that the author subscribed heavily to the Great Man theory of history, and perhaps wasn’t able to identify and follow broader trends, or causes and consequences, instead needing to understand everything through the actions of individuals.
All this is perhaps unsurprising given Norwich’s background, born in 1929 and a British Viscount (and yes, the book was published in 2011. I hope I’m this productive in my 80s). In other words, he was educated in the British Empire, and you can tell. There’s a tendency to prize manliness over morality: the primary axis upon which he judges popes is courage or firmness, used synonymously with “moral fortitude,” to mean sticking tenaciously to one’s position in the face of opposition, without regard to whether one is in the wrong. The book appears to sympathize with the popes in their battles for territory and control, praising for instance the decision of a pope to put all Rome under interdict in retaliation for the citizens’ support of a church reformer: this was, apparently, “an act of breathtaking courage.” (By the pope, not the reformer, though you can guess which winds up hanged.) The Romans’ desire for self-government and overall disenchantment with the popes—only natural given their proximity to papal behavior—are treated harshly. Meanwhile there’s a striking variety of dated assumptions: everyone’s death (and these popes dropped like flies) is attributed to shame, exhaustion or despair from their most recent setback. Attila the Hun “like all his race, was incorrigibly superstitious”—how did this get past an editor in 2011?
Also, one is left with some questions about the author’s research: claiming that the Gospel of Luke was written before Mark, for instance, or that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed on the same day (they died 9 months apart). As always, I have to wonder what else was wrong that I didn’t catch.
In the end I did finish this—admittedly with some skimming in the middle—because I was interested in the topic, but didn’t learn nearly as much as I’d hoped. Too many names that run together, without analysis of the most important issues; too much focus on the political history to the exclusion of everything else. I’d still like to find a history of the Catholic Church for the general reader, but one focused on the institution rather than individual popes, by an author with a handle on its religious as well as its political role, and with much more critical analysis....more
Oh, this is all right, I guess. I’m always drawn to these big historical surveys because I want to learn a lot of history at once, but then so often tOh, this is all right, I guess. I’m always drawn to these big historical surveys because I want to learn a lot of history at once, but then so often they’re both rushed and dry, and this book isn’t really an exception. That said, Gilmour does have a thesis—that the unification of Italy in 1860 was desired by very few people, was not a natural outcome for the peninsula, and has not been particularly successful. As a result, the book doesn’t give equal weight to every era; everything up through Napoleon is covered in the first 125 pages, and the remaining 275 focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. It is definitely focused on political and military history, though the author’s cultural interests (namely opera) show up occasionally.
The book does zoom in more in the later sections, and Gilmour spices it up a bit with very critical opinions of Italy’s government, military and politicians. And I did wind up learning a fair amount, so I don’t regret reading it, although I often considered quitting in the middle sections. It’s a country I didn’t know much about, usually seen in disconnected pieces in popular histories focused on England or France, and now I know more. So there is that.
A few other notes:
- What I’d really love to read more about is Italy in the medieval and early modern periods, focusing on the independent princedoms and republics. There are a few nods toward this in the book, including a short chapter about Venice: the restrictions on the Doge to keep him from acting like a regular prince were intense and managed to prevent corruption, and the procedure for electing him was truly labyrinthine. Venice was an independent republic for 1100 years, with shipping-oriented colonies of its own in the Adriatic and Mediterranean, until it was conquered by Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna, when the crowned heads of Europe met to redraw the map, their concern was for their own kind—so former republics, including Venice, got handed out as consolation prizes to evicted monarchs from elsewhere.
- Italy’s most flamboyant and terrible leaders have an uncanny tendency to presage similar leaders elsewhere: first Mussolini, copied and surpassed by Hitler; then Berlusconi, at the forefront of a global trend including Trump, Modi, etc.
- Italian armies generally performed very poorly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and every defeat seemed to make its leaders even more insecure and bloodthirsty, baying for a “baptism of blood” that would supposedly unite the nation, attacking resource-poor African countries for the pride of having colonies (and regularly getting trounced there), and spending unreasonable amounts on the military despite having no enemies. Unless you include the internal ones, Naples and Sicily in particular having been more conquered than unified, and fighting a later guerrilla war which the central government characterized as simple banditry. These days, though, it’s supremacist types in northern Italy who want to jettison the south.
- An alien who read this book might understandably come away confused about whether there are in fact women in Italy. If you pay close attention you’ll catch fleeting mentions of a few, but overall this reads more like a history written in the mid-20th century than the 21st. According to his bio the author is a British aristocrat and that explains a lot.
Overall, I’m glad to be more informed, but possibly need to find a better way to accomplish this in the future than these draggy tomes. I’m very glad to have finally finished....more
An entertaining and informative biography of a powerful Roman empress. This book is written in a humorous, irreverent style that you’ll either love orAn entertaining and informative biography of a powerful Roman empress. This book is written in a humorous, irreverent style that you’ll either love or hate—I enjoyed it, essentially taking this as the book version of a lecture by a knowledgeable and charismatic professor who livens things up by poking fun at the material. The author is a real ancient history scholar and seems to have done thorough research. I was thrown at first by the lack of endnotes, but there are occasional footnotes and Southon also regularly discusses her sources in the text itself—as it turns out there’s really only three that discuss Agrippina in any detail, and if written today none of them would pass the Wikipedia test for reliability, so in the end we can only make educated guesses about what occurred.
Despite that limitation, I learned a lot about Rome in the early imperial period—coming in knowing very little about it, this was a good primer on a variety of well-known figures, even while keeping the focus mostly on Agrippina. She seems to have been an extraordinary person, coming from a family where her parents and siblings were all dead (mostly of murder) by the time she reached full adulthood, after the exact same thing had happened to her own mother, but seeking out a life at the center of power: elevated and then exiled by her brother Caligula; marrying her uncle Claudius and ruling at his side; securing the throne for her son Nero, only to see him turn against her. Agrippina came from a society where women were expected to have no public role (though from the frequency with which they were sued and/or murdered, I have to wonder if this was honored mostly in the breach), but nevertheless built up a power base and seems to have been quite successful at politics. It’s a crying shame her memoir—political propaganda though it undoubtedly was—didn’t survive; as is it’s only referenced in a couple of surviving sources.
Southon is an unabashed Agrippina fangirl, but she tempers that by being clear when she’s speculating and separating what she wants to be true from what we actually know. Biographies of historical women can sometimes excuse selfish and harmful wielding of power on the grounds that it’s cool that a woman was doing it, and I can see why some readers would see that here, but to me it stays on the right side of the line. The author is able to make the case that Agrippina was a voice of reason and diplomacy who was actually good for the empire, while also acknowledging that the world of palace politics cared little for the lives of ordinary people. And Southon’s humor, empathy and groundedness bring a lot to what is otherwise a violent and depressing story in which most of the characters are brutally murdered.
In the end, a strong choice for those who enjoy popular history, as long as you don’t mind a somewhat flippant tone. It has whetted my appetite to learn more about the period, though it’s sad enough that I’m not sure I’ll be jumping back in too soon....more
Oof, I just couldn’t with this book, and it’s a rare example where the disconnect between my reaction and my friends’ is genuinely puzzling to me. I pOof, I just couldn’t with this book, and it’s a rare example where the disconnect between my reaction and my friends’ is genuinely puzzling to me. I pushed through 200 pages—at a time when I’m averaging a bit over two books a week, the fact that doing so took more than two weeks is in itself a bad sign, especially given the large-ish font—and I didn’t yet feel like I’d actually learned anything. The author spends so much time talking in circles about the limitations of the evidence that exists and how it doesn’t necessarily mean what people have taken it to mean that, well, where are the facts? How about just giving us a straightforward chronological narrative of what we do know? I was expecting this would be a good primer in Roman history for someone who knows very little about it, but am wondering if instead it’s intended for people who already know a lot, to challenge their assumptions. On the other hand, it’s more chatty than academic, and the references consist of lists of relevant reading for an entire chapter rather than citations for specific facts, so it’s perhaps not very well-designed for that purpose either.
I’m also confused by some of Beard’s assertions, such as that “It is inconceivable that the men of the fourth century BCE sat down to debate the precise implications of civitas sine suffragio [citizenship without the vote] or the exact privileges that went with belonging to a ‘Latin’ colony.” Personally I have no difficulty conceiving of people who have legal statuses and colonies debating these things; it seems rather contrary to human nature not to do so. To the extent that this book is built on the author’s instincts and assumptions, therefore, I have some doubts.
But mostly, this book just seemed like a giant, messy stew of words relaying no meaningful information. I’d definitely like an accessible primer on Roman history, but between this book and the Wikipedia article, the latter seems like both a more informative and less frustrating option....more
When it comes to fiction, I tire of authors quickly—four or so books will usually have me thoroughly sick of someone’s patterns and quirks even if I lWhen it comes to fiction, I tire of authors quickly—four or so books will usually have me thoroughly sick of someone’s patterns and quirks even if I loved the first one—and judging by my experience with Goldstone’s work, the same seems true with nonfiction. I loved Daughters of the Winter Queen, and I can’t confidently assert that this book—my fourth Goldstone history—is fundamentally different. But it’s time for me to move on.
Goldstone picks intriguing subjects: typically group biographies of queens and princesses from continental Europe about whom little has been written in English. This one caught my eye for its 18th century setting and particularly for featuring Empress Maria Theresa, who governed Austria and Hungary as the only Hapsburg empress to rule in her own right. As far as I can tell from this book, Maria Theresa was basically the 18th century German version of Queen Victoria: long reign, loving marriage, lots of children, long widowhood, preoccupation with morality. Maria Theresa was faced with devastating wars, however, as Frederick the Great frequently tried to carve out territory from her domain, beginning when she ascended the throne as a pregnant 20-something. I’m not clear from this book whether she accomplished much in the end besides finally deterring Frederick’s attacks (though he kept Silesia) and modernizing the military, but she was a hard worker who cared about doing the right thing and unusually, even appointed an official whose job was to criticize her behavior.
Maria Theresa and her husband had 16 kids, of whom 10—4 sons and 6 daughters—survived to adulthood; this book also features the most influential three daughters. Maria Christina was her mother’s favorite, and was allowed to marry a penniless nobleman she loved in order to stay nearby; the couple later became governors of the Austrian Netherlands and made some largely unsuccessful attempts to moderate imperial policy in order to keep this independent-minded region in the empire. While Maria Christina is perhaps not a crucial historical figure, I knew nothing about her before, so this was interesting.
Then there’s Maria Carolina, who was married off at age 15 to the king of Naples, a particularly childish young man, and essentially took over the government herself when he proved uninterested in it. Of the women profiled here she seems to have been the most enlightened ruler, and has quite a colorful story. Unfortunately, Napoleon later seized Naples and Maria Carolina doesn’t seem to have handled her later-in-life setbacks particularly gracefully. Her story is dramatic though, and also one I knew nothing about.
Finally there’s the youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette, well-known already as the ill-fated queen of France. Having already read a couple of biographies of her—one by Antonia Fraser and another by French historian Evelyne Lever—I did still find these sections interesting enough, though I was glad they didn’t consume the book as they might easily have done, and I’d recommend an individual biography instead for those particularly interested in her.
Overall, though this is a long book and some early sections on military maneuvers are a bit of a slog, I think it’s generally engaging; Goldstone’s talent is for relating complicated history in a colorful way. That said, four books in, her sassy asides no longer charm me, and her tendency to color historical figures’ words has begun to grate. Whenever she quotes a historical figure directly, it’s “he reported breathlessly,” “she murmured pointedly,” “he observed cheerfully,” “she countered sweetly.” This is especially confusing since most of these quotes presumably survived because they were written, not spoken, and therefore come with no more information about their authors’ emotional states than we can glean ourselves from the text.
The larger issue here is that Goldstone takes a definite viewpoint on each character who enters the story, what kind of person they were and why they behaved the way they did. This makes for engaging and memorable storytelling, but she’s also unabashedly partisan, both when it comes to particular figures and political situations. Perhaps unsurprisingly from someone who exclusively writes biographies of queens, Goldstone is very pro-queen, meaning not only feminist but, as becomes evident here, to some degree monarchist. Word choices can be opinionated, such as referring to the killing of a grand total of two of Marie Antoinette’s guards as “massacring” them. My increasing discomfort with her disparaging characterization of people who wanted to overthrow the system certainly contributed to my reduced enjoyment of the book.
Obviously, some reviewers here have violently disagreed with certain other interpretations. I think Goldstone’s theory that Louis XVI was autistic is an interesting and valid one, and she’s clear that it is speculation, based on comparison of his behavior to diagnostic guidelines and consultation with a child psychologist. It’s less clear from the text that her belief that Axel von Fersen fathered Marie Antoinette’s two younger children isn’t generally accepted (historians seem to agree the two had a romance but disagree about whether it was ever consummated).
The larger issue for me is less about specific incidents—historians will always have their own interpretations—and more about the author’s support for her assertions. Unfortunately, Goldstone only cites sources for direct quotations, and while there are many of those, most of the text still does not consist of them. So when, for instance, she claims that Marie Antoinette was humiliated and traumatized by being forced to remove her Austrian clothes and don French ones at the border—which Fraser figured probably wasn’t that big a deal, princesses being dressed and undressed by others constantly—we have no way of knowing whether Goldstone is referencing some more recently discovered source, or simply projecting her own assumptions.
So this book is on the one hand, a somewhat light popular history, but on the other, a hefty tome. I wound up finding it a bit tiresome, but as that is probably largely due to my own quirks, I wouldn’t discourage others from reading it. While Goldstone does include speculation of her own, I think the general narrative is solid and I wouldn’t dismiss it for disagreement with a couple of theories.
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Pre-release comments:
I haven't even finished Daughters of the Winter Queen yet but I want this book tomorrow. How Empress Maria Theresa has gone without an English-language biography (at least that I'm aware of!) so long I do not understand....more
This is a lazily researched, poorly-organized and poorly-written book, that nevertheless proved interesting to me by covering the biographies1.5 stars
This is a lazily researched, poorly-organized and poorly-written book, that nevertheless proved interesting to me by covering the biographies of 18th century female Italian scientists, which I have not found elsewhere. Biographies available in English are overwhelmingly Anglocentric and a historical biography of a non-English speaking woman without an adventurous sex life is a rare find indeed.
But unless you have a strong interest in that subject, you probably shouldn’t read this book. First of all, it’s poorly researched. The author apparently cribbed most of it from the dissertation of a researcher who died prematurely, and that researcher appears to have done much more work on it than this author, who regularly cites to Wikipedia (!). Second, she seems to run out of material about halfway through after already having covered Laura Bassi’s biography and some background on science at the time, so spends the rest of the book summarizing letters Bassi exchanged with various men (unclear why this isn’t simply incorporated into the biography portion) and providing mini-biographies of other Italian women active in science.
Third, the writing is just bad; I think the author is a science professor who is interested in the subject but very much not a writer. She struggles with appropriate prepositions, capitalization, and hyphenation, and there’s frequent awkward sentence structure and word use (words like “obtention” and “embracement”). She also frequently reminds readers of things we’ve already been told, going so far as to use Bassi’s full name and remind us of basic facts such as the city in which she lived well into the book, giving the impression that no final read-through was conducted to streamline the writing. Overall, it’s just rather awkward and jagged.
That said, it definitely is an interesting subject: Laura Bassi was a professor of science in 18th century Italy, which was quite an achievement for a woman at the time, and if the book doesn’t exactly bring her to life, it definitely introduces a lot of facts about her. As it turns out, Italy offered somewhat more opportunities for educated women in the 18th century than other European countries, largely based on the notion of the “exceptional woman,” whose brilliance reflected well on her family and city because since women were assumed to be less intelligent than men, if a woman was that smart, how brilliant must their men be? In general, these “exceptional women” were expected to adorn civic occasions rather than make actual careers, and to be very much the exceptions to the rule: the father of one of them, who had championed his own daughter’s advancement, argued successfully against the same university granting a degree to any other woman on the grounds that it would somehow cheapen his daughter’s achievement. Bassi managed to turn her degree into an actual career though, with some help from unexpected places, namely the Pope, an old friend of hers who wanted to improve the state of science in Bologna at the time.
I would love to see someone write biographies of the women discussed here for a general audience; there’s so much rich material that would be new to most English-speaking readers, and the information included here certainly expanded my understanding of history a little. That said, it is very difficult to recommend this particular book....more
I was eagerly awaiting this conclusion to the Neapolitan quartet, and it turned out to be all that I’d hoped. Now that it’s finished, I can wholeheartI was eagerly awaiting this conclusion to the Neapolitan quartet, and it turned out to be all that I’d hoped. Now that it’s finished, I can wholeheartedly recommend the series to anyone, especially to women but also to men.
Two things you should know right away. First, please don’t be put off by the covers. Yes, they look like they belong on the grocery store’s discount rack with lowbrow chick lit. Fortunately, the contents are nothing like that! They are excellent literary books with a lot of depth and no sentimentality or easy answers. Now that they’re gaining recognition in the U.S., hopefully there will be a reissue someday soon. Second, this series is really one novel in four volumes, so if you haven’t already read the first three, don’t start here. You’re looking for My Brilliant Friend. The quality is consistent throughout, so you’ll soon know whether this is something you’d like.
But Ferrante isn’t resting on her laurels here; there’s a lot in this book. It’s about friendship, of course: Elena returns to Naples and she and Lila resume their close relationship, even raising their children together, leading to unexpected drama and tragedy. It’s also about romantic relationships, and about the changes in family relationships as we age, and about loss. It’s about motherhood, and since this is Ferrante, both women are far from perfect mothers (but who is perfect at being a working single mother? Elena in particular is constantly required to choose, as she’s asked to travel the country promoting her books). It’s about what it means to succeed in life. It’s about escaping the place and the social class to which one is born, and whether that’s even possible. It’s about an Italy that’s constantly changing – a vibrant, violent, dangerous place, steeped in history yet teeming with new ideas.
As always, the book rushes along through short chapters that delve deeply into the characters’ lives and interactions. The writing is urgent and electric, not quite like anything else I’ve read. The characters are people, in all their complexity. The author doesn’t make it easy for us by assigning them two or three traits apiece; instead she shows them to us and lets us figure them out for ourselves. You may not always like them, but you’ll remember them.
I’m a little disappointed this series is finished, but looking forward to more from this author (and maybe even re-reading these books someday – something I hardly ever do). If you haven’t yet started this series, you are in for a treat....more
This is a great series (or rather, a great book published in several volumes), and it only improves as it goes. In this third volume, Elena and Lila aThis is a great series (or rather, a great book published in several volumes), and it only improves as it goes. In this third volume, Elena and Lila are both young women; Elena is now a published novelist engaged to her university classmate, while Lila begins the novel working in a sausage factory.
My standard disclaimers about these books: 1) Ignore the covers. I know this looks like a sentimental novel about motherhood that you’d buy discounted at the grocery store. It is none of those things (well, except that it is a novel). 2) For the love of God, do not read them out of order. Starting with this book would be like skipping The Fellowship of the Ring in favor of The Two Towers, or beginning halfway through War and Peace – i.e., you will be needlessly frustrated and confused and will not fully enjoy the story.
At any rate, these books are very consistent in style and quality, so assuming you paid attention to disclaimer #2, you already know whether you like them. This is the one where Lila has a very intense experience with the workers’ movement (though in truth everything in these novels is intense; that’s Ferrante’s writing for you) and Elena becomes a successful novelist and then a dissatisfied housewife. There’s a slight sag as the book moves quickly through the early years of Elena’s marriage, but it quickly regains its stride.
These books do a great job in their portrayal both of complex characters with conflicting motivations, and of a complicated society in violent flux – there is just so much here: communists vs. fascists, tension between students and workers, the arrival of feminism in a still-traditional society, social class and the difficulty of mobility and the sense of alienation from one’s roots for those who are upwardly mobile, and a very tough look at marriage and motherhood and love and sex – all of it wrapped up in this story of two women trying to figure out their lives. I’ve just eaten up these books; the characters and their surroundings feel completely real, and the writing is urgent and vivid and electric. There is not a traditional plot arc, but you cease to notice because when a book is alive enough, literary conventions feel beside the point: the stuff of lesser, more predictable authors.
At any rate, I feel enriched for having read these first three books, and am missing them already now that I have to wait for the fourth and final volume. The translation will be published in September, however, so now is a good time to start if you haven’t already!...more
It is hard to write individual reviews of these books, because they are all one big novel, and because they are remarkably consistent in terms of qualIt is hard to write individual reviews of these books, because they are all one big novel, and because they are remarkably consistent in terms of quality – if anything, the series improves as it goes, but perhaps I simply grew more invested in the characters. (Meanwhile, the covers are consistently godawful; somewhere out there is a marketer who needs a new calling.)
At any rate, this is the one where Elena goes to high school and then college – a remarkable achievement for a girl from a neighborhood where even middle school is reserved for the best and brightest – and Lila wrangles with a terrible marriage that nonetheless provides precious economic security. It’s also the book with the 100-page trip to Ischia – yes, it’s interesting material and important to the story, but maybe not quite that important.
That, however, is my biggest gripe about a book that is an excellent continuation of the story begun in My Brilliant Friend. The principals are complex, three-dimensional characters, now old enough to make adult decisions and mistakes; the writing brilliantly captures the nuances of the characters’ lives and relationships; the setting comes to life so clearly that the author must have known it firsthand. Of all the books, this is the one where Elena’s and Lila’s lives evolve most clearly in counterpoint. And while Lila is the more fiery of the two, Elena’s story is so closely observed that it never failed to fascinate me: it is a raw, honest tale of a great student struggling to cross class lines, and full of obstacles that would be easy for an observer to miss, from the neighborhood boyfriend with whom Elena will clearly never get ahead, to the simple fact that no one she knows reads a newspaper.
At any rate, this book is just as gripping, vivid and electric as the first – again, it feels real, not simply another mass-produced novel using the same old techniques to achieve predictable effects. I absolutely recommend this series (and yes, you must read them in order or they will not make sense)....more
I'm applying the 50-page test here, and abandoning it at least for now. I'm just not into it; it's too much a history lesson, without bringing its chaI'm applying the 50-page test here, and abandoning it at least for now. I'm just not into it; it's too much a history lesson, without bringing its characters to life enough to draw me in regardless. Also, it rubbed me the wrong way by spending what felt like the majority of those first 50 pages slamming the only major female character. Maybe Livia really was a terrible person, but books - like people - have to make a good impression if they want my company, and who wants to hang out with a new acquaintance whose conversation consists primarily of trashing somebody else? And in a way that feels borderline misogynistic, no less - everything Livia does is either taken as evidence of her presumed evil intentions or interpreted in light of them, to the point I was feeling more sympathetic to her than the narrator.
And sure, maybe I'd think better of the book if I read it all. But as they say, so many books, so little time!...more
This is an excellent series, unlike anything else I’ve read. Please ignore the awful Wal-Mart covers and lame titles; Ferrante writes vibrant, high-quThis is an excellent series, unlike anything else I’ve read. Please ignore the awful Wal-Mart covers and lame titles; Ferrante writes vibrant, high-quality literary fiction that in no way resembles its packaging.
These books tell the story of two girls (later women) who grow up together in a poor Naples neighborhood after WWII. Elena, the narrator, is gifted and hardworking, and begins to pull herself out of poverty through education. Her best friend, Lila, is ferociously talented, but her parents remove her from school at a young age. This first book follows the two through childhood and adolescence, where their paths begin to diverge. But the series is really one giant book, with no firm stopping places, so don’t be surprised when this one feels incomplete on its own.
There is something electric about Ferrante’s writing, as if she’s plugged into a slice of life and is scribbling down whatever comes out (indeed, the premise of the series is Elena, now a writer, scribbling down all she can remember of Lila after her friend’s disappearance). I’ve read a lot of books, and especially in contemporary novels it can be all too easy to see the scaffolding behind the writing, the plot contrivances and shorthand characterization and emotional cheap shots. And perhaps my favorite thing about the Neapolitan novels is that there’s none of that here. They are fresh and raw and reading them is like having a firsthand experience; the complexity of the characters’ relationships, the emotional detail, and the immediacy and realism of the writing quickly immerse the reader in the characters’ world, to the point that it’s easy to forget you’re reading a novel at all.
And they are complex, believable characters living in a three-dimensional and fascinating world, so really, what’s not to like? There’s a story about friendship here, but there’s also a great deal more – it’s a story of a time of violent social upheaval in Italy, a story of women finding themselves in a man’s world, a story about class and education and the ways growing up in poverty shape one’s identity. They are wonderfully smart books, of the sort that articulate things you’d known but never put into words, even while they pull you in to the story.
They aren’t perfect books – some of the minor characters lack distinguishing characteristics, and none of the books are satisfying as standalone novels – but these are minor flaws for a truly groundbreaking series. I wish I could read it in the original Italian, but the translations are excellent; they keep the flavor of the original language, but the writing is good in its own right.
At any rate, having just completed the third book, I’m missing this series already and can’t wait to read the fourth and final volume when it’s released in English this fall. Definitely recommended to those who enjoy literary or historical fiction, stories about women’s lives or female friendship, or simply discovering new and exciting books.
My original review:
This is a provisional 4 stars - this book is not constructed to stand alone, so I plan to write a full review after reading the entire story.
For now, I'll just say I really liked this: complex and believable characters and relationships in a lifelike cultural setting.
Oh, and please ignore the Wal-Mart cover; it has no relation to the story in either subject matter or quality....more
Bitter Greens is a lot of things: historical fiction, historical fantasy, fairy tale retelling. Most importantly, though, it's great fun, containing gBitter Greens is a lot of things: historical fiction, historical fantasy, fairy tale retelling. Most importantly, though, it's great fun, containing grand stories worthy of fairy tales, with the complexity and historical background of a good adult novel.
Slightly over half the book is narrated by Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a lady-in-waiting in the court of Louis XIV of France. (She was an actual historical writer, one of the first to tell the Rapunzel fairy tale.) We first meet her at age 47, when she's banished to a convent for offending the king; her chapters alternate between her struggle to adapt to her new life and her dramatic backstory. While these chapters have a fairy-tale style, Charlotte-Rose's story is strongly grounded in the turbulent historical era and contains little to no magic.
The rest of the novel is a retelling of "Rapunzel." The majority of these chapters focus on Margherita, the young Rapunzel character, but there's also a chunk belonging to Selena, the witch, in which we get her tragic backstory. These sections contain strong fantasy elements, but still have a historical framework: Italy, particularly Venice, in the 16th century.
The plot jumps around in time, looping backward and forward through the characters' lives; this works well, as connections and similarities between the three main characters build throughout the book. The plot is highly entertaining, Charlotte-Rose's story as much so as the Rapunzel tale. (I can see why Forsyth decided to devote so much time to the writer, as hers was clearly a story begging to be told. The more unlikely elements, such as the dancing-bear scheme, apparently come straight from the historical record.) For me at least, the balance of fairy tale and realism is just right: the story has the larger-than-life quality of a fairy tale, without becoming too simple or dreamy. In isolation, Charlotte-Rose's story might seem a little too easy or cliché, but interwoven with the Rapunzel tale it works splendidly.
The protagonists are the sort of heroines one would expect in a modern fairy tale: brave and good and resourceful. Charlotte-Rose and Margherita seem created with an eye more to making them likeable than realistic; but they are indeed likeable, with sufficient depth to sustain their ultimately satisfying stories. The characterization might at first appear black-and-white, but soon proves somewhat more complex. And while Margherita fills the traditional Rapunzel role, she's a capable girl who provides an answer to many of the problems modern readers have with the character (for instance, why she doesn't just climb down on her own hair).
Selena's story, though, is rather less satisfying. She reads like a darker echo of Charlotte-Rose, and while the author probably didn't intend this interpretation, I find her chapters most interesting when viewed as "the witch's backstory as imagined by Charlotte-Rose." Her character doesn't quite come together the way the other two do, and the inevitable tragedies in her life--having nothing to do with old age--don't explain her obsession with eternal youth. But, in fairness, I may be overly critical on this point--since reading Wicked I've found all other attempts to create wicked witches totally lame.
Bitter Greens has a good sense of place, and does a great job of maintaining that perfect fairy-tale mood. It's not great literature, but the writing style is adequate. Do note that this is definitely a book for adults, with some rather explicit scenes. These become rather repetitive: there are at least 5 relationships in the book, and while they go in different directions, most of the sexual encounters feel nearly interchangeable.
Finally, the historical element is quite interesting; the author clearly did her research, and the French sections in particular are full of lively detail without bogging the story down.
In the end, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fantasy or fairy tale retellings. What I don't understand at all is why it's been published nearly a year in Australia and has yet to come out in the U.S. This seems like a book that would have a large and appreciative audience--better get on that, publishers!...more
I loved the idea of this book. It’s set in a 16th century Italian convent--while convents often appear on the periphery in historical fiction, I was eI loved the idea of this book. It’s set in a 16th century Italian convent--while convents often appear on the periphery in historical fiction, I was eager to get a more in-depth look inside one. And the book revolves around two potentially great characters: Serafina, a rebellious teenage novice, is the focal point of the story, while most of the book is told from the point-of-view of Zuana, a reluctant nun who nevertheless has found much to appreciate in convent life. Zuana in particular ought to have been fantastic: she’s not particularly pious for her time, and in our time would probably have been a doctor. In the convent, she’s the “dispensary mistress,” essentially acting as a doctor--a freedom she didn’t have in the outside world--but she still sometimes chafes at the convent’s restrictions, even though she doesn’t regret not having a husband or children.
But despite its potential, what stands out about this book is its lack of plot and tension. It takes an awfully long time to get started and never really gains momentum. Serafina acts rebellious, but we mostly see that through Zuana’s eyes, and there isn’t much going on in Zuana’s life. She treats sick people. She has a subdued rivalry with a more conservative nun. She worries about increasing restrictions on convents, a fear that never materializes in the actual book. And.... that’s about it. Zuana has already made her major decisions and come to terms with her life before the book begins. Most of the novel is just daily life and it’s all very subdued, without even much sense of simmering tension beneath the surface.
Maybe that’s the point--that convent life is subdued--but for that kind of book to work for me, I need more. More in-depth, insightful characterization. More elegant writing. More of an ability to make everyday life compelling. As is, it’s just a slow book that doesn’t compensate with extra depth.
Learning a bit about convent life was interesting. More could have been done with the idea that the convent is simultaneously restrictive and liberating (a place where women govern themselves and can pursue some career interests, but where everyday life is strictly regulated). Unfortunately, this book turned out to be bland and predictable, developing exactly as I’d guessed it would. The characters never leaped off the page, the slow-as-molasses story never hooked me, the cultural detail set the stage but never reached the level of being fascinating in its own right. I wish I’d been able to like this book more and am rather impressed with the people who did; to me it seemed uninspired, a sad waste of potential. Dunant mentions in the Author’s Note that some nuns resisted new restrictions on convents--even physically fighting back--and I was left wondering why she didn’t write that story instead....more
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