Negative Positive
Title: Renaissance soap opera with all the modern contrivances
Review: This is one of those rare occasions where a book's cover and blurb haunted me. I had found it in the library, and returned to get it. I read it in perhaps two sittings. It was gripping, moving, but...in the end, it fell completely apart. The heroes turn out to be monomaniacal hypocrites, I almost felt sorry for the heroine, only I could not conceive how she had succumbed to such stupidity. The rectors wife was perhaps the only person to draw from me any great sympathies. Her life is a tragedy in more ways than one, and as the wife of the rector, is perhaps more so now, though they seem a happy couple. Until she dies.The story is set during the true horrors of the plague but the web of entanglement is just a bit too contrived to be believed. I closed the book feeling cheated. In the end it felt a bit like a renaissance soap opera. I'm sure HBO could have a field day with it. All in all, a disappointing read.
Is the review positive or negative? 