My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Historical fiction meets contemporary romance in this tale of two glassblowers. Leonora Manin, an artist with some skill in glassblowing, has been reading about her ancestor, the illustrious Venetian glassmaker Corradino Manin (fictional). Now reeling from her recent divorce, she decides to make a new start in Venice, which is also the city of her own birth. Leonora fortuitously lands a job and a new love interest during her very first week as a native Venetian. Author Marina Fiorato spins out her debut novel by juxtaposing, in alternating chapters, the lives of 18th century Corradino and 21st century Leonora. By far the most effective of the two story lines is that of Corradino, who, during the downfall of his wealthy merchant family, is taken in by the master of one of Murano’s best glassworks. He grows to become one of the greatest glass artists of all time, and while this sounds wonderful to modern readers, the Republic closely guarded those artists with an eye to preventing them from selling secret formulas and techniques to other countries. But to save his illegitimate daughter, Corradino is reluctantly drawn into a plot to do just that, by traveling to Paris to create the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Leonora will learn that she is the direct descendant of that girl.
Leonora’s story is far less compelling, and, because it relies so heavily upon coincidence, less than satisfying. In these sections, Ms. Fiorato resorts to extravagant description, perhaps to dress up a somewhat prosaic plot, in which she is fired when a columnist accuses Corradino of treason. The love match between Leonora and Alessandro Bardolino, descendant of another of Venice’s patrician lines, looks like “someone who stepped out of a painting”, quite literally. So for that matter does Leonora; in her case, it’s the famous Primavera. It takes a while to get started, but things do heat up a bit, and avid romance readers are likely to enjoy their tale more than I did.
Venice in the early Renaissance was a perilous in the extreme. Innocent or guilty, prominent or poverty stricken, an individual could be destroyed in the blink of an eye, if it suited the aims of the politically powerful. The age of scientific enlightenment was dawning, but superstition and “heresy” still abounded under the iron rule of the church. Luciano, a street urchin, is offered a rare opportunity to transform his life by the chef of the doge, who is not merely a culinary master. Chef Ferraro is one of the Guardians, a network of educated men who are living and dying to preserve priceless knowledge that church and government are eager to obliterate. Together, Ferraro and Luciano undertake the perilous task of preserving this knowledge and denying it to the autocrats.
purposeful and decadent. Maddalena and Chiaretta, sisters abandoned as toddlers at the famed Pieta ospedale, are nurtured there and trained to become superb musicians. As a young woman, Chiaretta chooses marriage over career, and becomes a member of the aristocracy, adapting to ways completely at odds with the standards under which she was raised. Maddalena will live out her years as maestra of the Pieta’s renowned coro, cloistered and virginal, deeply immersed in her music, and destined to become the muse of composer Antonio Vivaldi.
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