Today I'm linking up with Carole from Carole's Random Life of Books for Books from the Backlog. I really enjoy the chance to feature a book that's been hiding in the piles of books for far too long!
Blurb: French novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, SÅ“ur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...
After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.
Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.
Why It Needs to Get This One Off the Shelf: I was so excited when I won this in a giveaway years ago and it's a bit different from anything I've read lately. Plus, this is a pretty hefty book so it's taking up some serious room!
Big books always end up at the back of the queue for me-I only read the ones I really really want at that size!
ReplyDeleteI remember having this title on my GR wishlist back a few years ago. Then when I deleted and changed up my GR account certain books, such as this one, fell through the cracks. I hope you get to read it and find it pleasurable!
ReplyDeleteI did read this, liked it, but it is what I would call more on the seriously heavy side of my reading.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely sounds interesting, I don't think I've read much concerning the French court but what a fascinating setting!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds intriguing. I want to read more after the synopsis. The writing just flows.
ReplyDeleteThis one sounds unusual - parsley was known as bitter greens?? I use it allll the time in my cooking... But I look forward to hearing all about this one:)
ReplyDeleteOooooo, a Rapunzel retelling. Neat. I hope it'll be good.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds wonderful, Katherine. The cover is gorgeous as well. I hope you enjoy it when you get the chance to read it.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book and highly recommend it! Her novel The wild girl is also brilliant. It looks at the life of one the wives of the Brothers Grimm.
ReplyDeleteI won a hardcover from Goodreads and a couple of days later I won a rafflecopter giveaway I had entered around the same time, and I guess the author was responsible for sending the copies out because she sent me a scathing email about being greedy and entering two contests for it (I had actually entered five). 😱 She said she legally had to send me the Goodreads copy, but she was not going to send me the one I won through the rafflecopter. When I asked her to send it to my Tell Me Tuesday co-host instead, and promised her we would do a buddy read and a tandem review, she said okay, but when I gave her the address she recognized the address because my co-host had already won a copy, ha ha, and the next day she was on Twitter tweeting that we were obviously thieves who entered tons of contests to sell books to make money. 😂 I emailed the publisher about what she did and they sent me a copy and made her send me a $10 Amazon GC. 😆 I ended up giving the extra copy to my sister, and I had such sour grapes about the whole thing I donated the other copy to charity without reading it. She never did end up sending the copy ti my co-host she had won fair and square. 😛
ReplyDeleteI read this book during one of the readathons. It's a good one!
ReplyDeleteI have a copy of this one on my TBR shelf too. I hope you enjoy it when you get to it!
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