THE BIRTH OF VENUS: SARAH DUNANT

I have been wanting to read this novel ever since I read the reviews seven or eight years ago.  It sounded interesting and I liked the idea of a text set in the Renaissance, right around the time of Leonardo and Michelangelo.  The story is takes place around the time of Savonarola, the angry, God Driven Priest, who terrorized Florence for a number of years in the 1490's.  I have to say the repression he represented, with gangs of moral enforcers, reminded me not only of what's going on in Iran, but also in the USA with all the Conservative Christians, their influence, how they would like to regulate your life, especially your morality if they could.  The heroine is Alessandra, the illegitimate daughter of Lorenzo d' Medici, though she does not find this out till later in life.  We see her growing up in a house of a wealthy cloth merchant, independent, artistic, and stubborn, marching to the beat of her own drum.  Clearly, there's no place for her in this society, even if it were not the time of Savonarola.  She befriends a painter, hired to decorate their chapel, falls in love but ends up having to marry some on else, of her class, a somewhat loveless arranged marriage, that suits her in some ways because her husband allows her the freedom she would not have gotten in any other marriage.  I will not tell you why he's so accommodating.  Her best friend is her lady in waiting, a black slave from Africa, and between them, she manages to survive Savonarola, ends up following her passion, painting, has a child, and ends up living in a monastery for women of means, seemingly the only place a women of independent spirit could live freely and happily.  The books strength is it's mood, the climate of Florence, as its threatened by religious bigotry and fanaticism as well as the plague.  It took me awhile to get into the book; either I was not ready for it or it was a bit slow.  I cannot say I loved it, but I did finish it.  Perhaps I am corrupted by the crime thrillers I have been reading.  They grab your interest immediately and are fast paced.  THE BIRTH OF VENUS is much more leisurely, not a lot happens, and though there is some mystery, the characters never really interested me as much as I would have liked.  Three stars out of five.