Maddalena and Luisa are opposites: Maddalena from a wealthy, patrician family, Luisa a foundling, forever indebted to the Ospedale della Pietà, the convent school that has taken her in and taught her music. When Maddalena's fortunes change -- due to the questions surrounding her parentage, and her mother who has apparently run off with a lover -- her brothers and father decide to send her off to the Pietà, too, hoping to make her into a respectable young woman who will be married off to an equally respectable young man. When Luisa and Maddalena meet, they feel an immediate connection, beyond anything either of them has ever experienced before. But Maddalena has dangerous plans to secure her own future, and as she draws Luisa deeper into her world, both girls learn that everything comes with a price.
Starting off truthfully, I have very conflicted feelings about this book. The first few pages were captivating, filled by beautiful, flowery writing, but it quickly became a double edged-sword. Having never read anything by Fine before, I didn't know what to expect, but any book set in eighteenth century Venice, featuring a romance between two women, is enough to entice me into requesting the ARC. However, as I went through the novel, I found myself never quite able to fully invest myself in the story, particularly when it came to Luisa's character.
The setting is rich with potential, and our opening, with the bold and slightly calculating Maddalena, certainly caught my interest. Maddalena is like many female characters who end up being my favorites: not quite likable, in a way that actually increases one's interest and enjoyment of her. Luisa, on the other hand, seems all right upon our first meeting with her, but as time went on, I grew increasingly irritated and frustrated with her naïveté and her inability to take any initiative whatsoever. Although Maddalena is manipulative and borders on being unkind, she's fascinating, layered and her motivations change and shift throughout. Strangely enough, it was Luisa who stuck me as being slightly false, and because of this, not very likable.
Perhaps it's partly my fault, but I also wasn't aware that the storyline heavily features magical realism, and that a large part of it includes rather abstract and surrealistic scenes. I'm not against those things by any mean, but I felt that to some degree, it was used to orchestrate and engineer the plotline to the author's liking. Not quite a deus ex machina, but something very like it, which for me, doesn't work. One more thing I'm awfully sore about: the relationship between Luisa and Maddalena. This is categorized as LGBT, and in some ways it is (Maddalena is very obviously a lesbian), but if you're hoping for a complex relationship between Luisa and Maddalena, I'm afraid you'll be very disappointed indeed. Look, I'm a huge fan of toxic, slightly cruel relationships between women (a la Villanelle and Eve, or Frances and Lilian in The Paying Guests), but this flops between being one-sided and maybe? Possibly? Something else. It's confusing, but not in a rewarding way.
Now, for the positives: Again, Maddalena's character is one that has stuck with me for a while, even after completing this book months ago. Fine's writing is really, genuinely beautiful, and I think there was so much potential here, but unfortunately it just ended up falling flat. By no means is this an awful book, but instead, sadly a bit mediocre.
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