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expendablemudge's review
4.0
Rating: 4.25* of five
This is subtitled "A Novel of the Borgias" which, when I read it in 1979, I took to mean was about the Borgias. It was more subtle than that. A book published thirty years ago, amid the Carter Malaise years, about the roiling changes and upheavals of the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, didn't have far to go to make its political statements. The Borgias, strong and ruthless, stood against the world astride a colossal machine of churchstate that seemed invincible.
Anyone remember a little old German named "Luther?" An English King called Henry? They weren't far in the future from the novel's setting in 1501-1503.
So the parallels to the US sense of itself in that time were obvious to a fairly bright new father. What I didn't see then, unsurprisingly, is that the then-middle-aged novelist had a different sense of the US, and was using the Florentine Signory (a nugatory and paralyzed non-system of non-governance) to make a deeper point about the direction she saw the country heading.
All of which is, really, speculative and irrelevant to the real purpose of a novel: Storytelling. Which this novel does quite well. I was hugely relieved that I liked the book as much, possibly more, at fifty than at twenty. It would have felt slightly upsetting to have found this book, one I esteemed so highly, wasn't up to the mark for adult me.
Nicholas Dawson, Englishman born in Navarre to exiled parents, is our POV character. He is slight, middle-aged, and queer. He is the secretary to the aforementioned nugatory Signory's legate to the Papal Court, and he is dangerously overqualified for the job...so much so that he rewrites his boss's dispatches home and makes them make sense, instead of being full of windy twaddle about the stars portending and the planets foretelling.
The day dawns, as in all underutilized workers's lives it must, when a better offer comes along: Cesare Borgia, Pope's son and all-around bastard, begins a long, slow seduction of Nicholas into Borgia service while remaining Florence's man in Rome.
Nicholas has fallen in love, a thing not in itself surprising, with a beautiful younger man who is from the wrong branch of a noble family and therefore has no place in the hierarchies of the time. Stefano and Nicholas are presented with startling clarity of vision. The reasons each loves the other are clear, as are the reasons their relationship has rocky patches and separations in it.
This treatment is uncommon in fiction written for a general audience, and was even more uncommon 30 years ago. I thought that quality alone made the book great, back then, and I see little reason not to laud Holland for her work today. She presents a real relationship between real men in an honest, warts-and-all kindness that I'd love to see other heterosexual writers work to emulate.
Our Nicholas, though, is playing both ends against the middle, and that is never, ever safe. He loses Stefano to Cesare Borgia's wily and cruel (non-sexual) seduction, and ultimately loses Stefano entirely to a cruel death.
It's then that the novel stopped making sense to me in 1979. Nicholas gets braver, and Holland puts him in place as the prime instigator of Cesare's poisoning of his father and himself at a party. Then, I could see no reason why he'd do such a nutty thing; now, it makes perfect sense. He has nothing left to lose. Kill me, don't kill me, it's all the same to me; acting in that frame of mind makes decisions very pure and very simple. I never considered that it would really be possible to sincerely be that way in 1979. In 2009, I know *exactly* where Holland has Nicholas coming from.
Bravely wrought, Miss Holland. This is a delightful book, well re-read, and worth your time and effort to find and read.
This is subtitled "A Novel of the Borgias" which, when I read it in 1979, I took to mean was about the Borgias. It was more subtle than that. A book published thirty years ago, amid the Carter Malaise years, about the roiling changes and upheavals of the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, didn't have far to go to make its political statements. The Borgias, strong and ruthless, stood against the world astride a colossal machine of churchstate that seemed invincible.
Anyone remember a little old German named "Luther?" An English King called Henry? They weren't far in the future from the novel's setting in 1501-1503.
So the parallels to the US sense of itself in that time were obvious to a fairly bright new father. What I didn't see then, unsurprisingly, is that the then-middle-aged novelist had a different sense of the US, and was using the Florentine Signory (a nugatory and paralyzed non-system of non-governance) to make a deeper point about the direction she saw the country heading.
All of which is, really, speculative and irrelevant to the real purpose of a novel: Storytelling. Which this novel does quite well. I was hugely relieved that I liked the book as much, possibly more, at fifty than at twenty. It would have felt slightly upsetting to have found this book, one I esteemed so highly, wasn't up to the mark for adult me.
Nicholas Dawson, Englishman born in Navarre to exiled parents, is our POV character. He is slight, middle-aged, and queer. He is the secretary to the aforementioned nugatory Signory's legate to the Papal Court, and he is dangerously overqualified for the job...so much so that he rewrites his boss's dispatches home and makes them make sense, instead of being full of windy twaddle about the stars portending and the planets foretelling.
The day dawns, as in all underutilized workers's lives it must, when a better offer comes along: Cesare Borgia, Pope's son and all-around bastard, begins a long, slow seduction of Nicholas into Borgia service while remaining Florence's man in Rome.
Nicholas has fallen in love, a thing not in itself surprising, with a beautiful younger man who is from the wrong branch of a noble family and therefore has no place in the hierarchies of the time. Stefano and Nicholas are presented with startling clarity of vision. The reasons each loves the other are clear, as are the reasons their relationship has rocky patches and separations in it.
This treatment is uncommon in fiction written for a general audience, and was even more uncommon 30 years ago. I thought that quality alone made the book great, back then, and I see little reason not to laud Holland for her work today. She presents a real relationship between real men in an honest, warts-and-all kindness that I'd love to see other heterosexual writers work to emulate.
Our Nicholas, though, is playing both ends against the middle, and that is never, ever safe. He loses Stefano to Cesare Borgia's wily and cruel (non-sexual) seduction, and ultimately loses Stefano entirely to a cruel death.
It's then that the novel stopped making sense to me in 1979. Nicholas gets braver, and Holland puts him in place as the prime instigator of Cesare's poisoning of his father and himself at a party. Then, I could see no reason why he'd do such a nutty thing; now, it makes perfect sense. He has nothing left to lose. Kill me, don't kill me, it's all the same to me; acting in that frame of mind makes decisions very pure and very simple. I never considered that it would really be possible to sincerely be that way in 1979. In 2009, I know *exactly* where Holland has Nicholas coming from.
Bravely wrought, Miss Holland. This is a delightful book, well re-read, and worth your time and effort to find and read.
nigellicus's review
5.0
Nicholas Dawson is the secretary to the Florentine ambassador in 16th century Rome. Having lived there for twenty years now, he is far removed from Florence, but continues thanklessly protecting the ambassador from his own indecision. However, this is the Rome of the Borgias, with Alexander VI in power and Cesare Borgia terrorising the Romagne with his army of condotierres. Nicholas is suborned as a spy by Cesare, and though his pride is rankled, he is also enamoured by the proximity of power, and proceeds to make some pertinent pieces of tactical advice. The Borgias, however, are pretty much utter monsters, self-serving, fickle and incredibly dangerous.
Unromantic, unsentimental, polished and sleek, this is a novel about power and corruption. Typical Holland, it is a man's world full of men plotting and killing and maneuvering. There are women in this: Lucrezia Borgia and two of her cousins and a brief, tragic appearance by Catherine Sforza. There isn't even a female love interest as Nicholas is gay, and his disreputable lover may doom him or ultimately redeem him, but neither of them are particularly fond of women at all. There's probably a Phd there for someone to explore how one woman can write so thoroughly and subversively about men in different periods of history but I'll just remark that this may be my favourite Holland yet and move on.
Unromantic, unsentimental, polished and sleek, this is a novel about power and corruption. Typical Holland, it is a man's world full of men plotting and killing and maneuvering. There are women in this: Lucrezia Borgia and two of her cousins and a brief, tragic appearance by Catherine Sforza. There isn't even a female love interest as Nicholas is gay, and his disreputable lover may doom him or ultimately redeem him, but neither of them are particularly fond of women at all. There's probably a Phd there for someone to explore how one woman can write so thoroughly and subversively about men in different periods of history but I'll just remark that this may be my favourite Holland yet and move on.
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