Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
Sacred Hearts
By Sarah Dunant
Completed August 15, 2009
The third novel in her Italian Renaissance series, Sarah Dunant transported her readers into the everyday lives of nuns in her latest book, Sacred Hearts. Set in a convent in Northern Italy, Dunant continued her pristine historical writing through strong characters and women's quests to find freedom during a repressed era.
The story centered on a young novice, Serafina, who entered the convent against her will. During 16th century Italy, the price of dowries was exorbinantly high, and families with more than one daughter often had to choose which one would get married. Serafina's sister was chosen for marriage, leaving the young woman to become a "bride of Christ," including a smaller dowry that was given to the convent. Serafina was an accomplished singer and had a lover "on the outside," and was heartbroken to be confined to a convent.
Serafina disrupted the everyday lives of the convent - ranging in emotions from hysterics to depression - and her advocate was Suora Zuana, the convent's healer. Suora Zuana took the young novice under her wing, attempting to show her that nuns had more rights inside the convent than outside.
As in her past books, Dunant created unforgettable characters - ones that taught us more about the history than the plot itself. One of the more fascinating characters was the convent's abbess, Madonna Chiara. The abbess was incredibly savvy, despite her near-lifelong seclusion, and her astute handling of convent politics made her that more interesting. Her adversary was Suora Umiliana - the novice mistress who disagreed with Madonna Chiara's leadership of the convent. And in the middle was Suora Zuana, whose healing included the body and soul.
While I enjoyed the characters, there were times when the plot of Sacred Hearts dragged, and I became less interested in the "main" story of Serafina and more interested in the political chess game between Madonna Chiara and Suora Umiliana. I wished Dunant made this conflict more central to the story. Sacred Hearts, in my opinion, is the weakest of the three Italian Renaissance stories because of this plot issue. But that doesn't mean it's a bad book. It just means its predecessors (The Birth of Venus and In The Company of the Courtesan) had a stronger mixture of characters, plots and historical framework. Lovers of historical fiction, especially of the Italian Renaissance, should find all of Dunant's books to be compelling and explorative reads. (
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