The birth of Venus : a novel
(Book)
Author
Published
New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004.
Edition
Random House trade paperback edition.
Physical Desc
xv, 403 pages ; 21 cm
Status
Morro Bay Library - Adult Fiction
FIC
1 available
FIC
1 available
Copies
Location | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Morro Bay Library - Adult Fiction | FIC | On Shelf |
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Published
New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004.
Format
Book
Edition
Random House trade paperback edition.
Language
English
Notes
General Note
Publishers and dates may vary. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Little, Brown in 2003.
General Note
Copies may include a Reader's guide, Questions for discussion (p. [401]-403).
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 396-397).
Description
From its first arresting sentence, Sarah Dunant's magnificent novel embroils the reader in the coming-of-age story of Alessandra Cecchi, a fourteen-year-old girl with a strong will and a passion for painting. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain's most innovative writers of literary suspense. Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter's abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra's parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola's reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra's married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
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