In mid-1500 Florence, Lucrezia is the least favoured child of the grand duke and duchess. Her older sisters either tease her or ignore her, her brothers are indifferent. Her sister, Maria is about to marry Alfonso, grand duke of Ferrara, but an illness intervenes, causing her death. Alfonzo’s roving eye remembers tiny Lucrezia and negotiates their marriage. Lucrezia is far too young, but her father sees this as a wise political move and she is married to the duke by age fifteen. Is she old enough and wise enough to survive the turmoil within his court? And what of the rumours that the duke has never conceived a child in all is amorous endeavours? Will her life be in danger if she can’t become pregnant?
This well-written novel is loosely based on historical characters and facts. I was spellbound from page one where Lucrezia is aware that she is probably going to be murdered. I rate this as the top book I’ve read so far this year.
After two twins Mara and Aileen, witness their mother’s suicide their father is wild with grief. He blindfolds both girls so they won’t see the worst in the world, causing Mara to become blind and Aileen ‘s eyesight to be damaged. When a Nova Scotia neighbour discovers what he has done to his children, they are separated from their father and each other and it is not until years later that Aileen discovers where her sister is living. She leaves a broken marriage and heads to Dawson City, but when she arrives she struggles to decipher fact from fiction in the tales Mara’s son, Jason spins. Will she ever learn the truth about what happened to her sister?
A well written tale that because of Jason’s twisting of the truth, the ending couldn’t be fathomed until the very last page.
In 1946 three sisters, Deepa, Priya and Jamini live in a village not far from Calcutta. Their father, a doctor, is bent on helping the poor who cannot afford to pay for his services, forcing the family to live a frugal life. Deepa, the most beautiful and favoured by her mother, convinces her father to take them to Calcutta where they stay in her father’s best friend and neighbour, Somnath’s mansion. Somnath’s son, Amit volunteers to join them so he can be near Priya. But once they arrive in Calcutta riots break out that changes the course of the family’s lives forever.
Reviews from the Guardian and the Times referred to this novel as “often funny” and crediting the story with “tremendous imagination.” I couldn’t disagree more. It appeared as if these reviewers knew nothing about Sri Lankan history because there was nothing funny about thousands of bodies hacked to pieces so they couldn’t be identified and dumped into a Colombo lake. Nor anything imaginative about these facts because that’s what they were—historical facts. What was clever about Karunatalaka’s writing was that Almeida, his main character is killed, and oversees these crimes as a ghost thereby telling the tale from an omnipotent viewpoint.
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