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Jan 22, 2014
Sunflower
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"She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them." ....The abbess is right. The world is full of them: daughters who are too young, too old, too ill, too ugly, too difficult, too stupid, too smart. Waste. Banishment. Burial alive.
This was apparently the fate of many young women in the 1600's. Installed in a Benedictine convent out of harm's way and spending their days in prayer, though one of them isn't at all happy about this. The politics and problems wit ...more
This was apparently the fate of many young women in the 1600's. Installed in a Benedictine convent out of harm's way and spending their days in prayer, though one of them isn't at all happy about this. The politics and problems wit ...more
Set in the year 1570 in the convent of Santa Caterina in Ferrara, Italy, is the story of a young woman sent to the convent by her family after an illicit love affair. The story centers around the young novice and several of the sisters, including the mother abbess, novice mistress, an older nun with history of visions and estasies and the convent dispensary mistress. All of the lives of these nuns revolve around the actions of the young novice Serafina. Sister Zuana, the dispensary mistress, dev
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I have been a fan of the author's since reading In the Company of the Courtesan and The Birth of Venus. This book, however, was just okay. I felt it was rather boring and moved very slowly with little plot until the last 100 pages. Maybe that was the intention since the book is set in a convent in Italy in 1570 where, I can only guess, life was rather boring and moved very slowly. I felt it took a long time to develop the characters and some minor characters never were developed. Again, that cou
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A nun's life in the Renaissance period was not fun I gather from this tragic tale.
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Took me so long to get through this book - sometimes felt like a chore picking it up, but I kept hoping for it to get more interesting. There were good parts of the book, just never reached a point where I could not put it down.
Jul 01, 2009
Gaijinmama
marked it as to-read
Aug 13, 2009
Erin (NY)
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Jun 12, 2010
Juliana Philippa
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Jul 11, 2012
SandyC
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Jan 17, 2013
Dana Arbelaez
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Jan 20, 2014
Lori
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Feb 26, 2014
Suzanne
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Oct 07, 2014
Anna
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Aug 22, 2016
Terri
marked it as vaca-home-library
Jul 08, 2019
Martha
marked it as to-read
Jun 26, 2021
Lizzy Siddal (Lizzy’s Literary Life)
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Jun 04, 2022
Johanne
marked it as to-read
