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Sacred Hearts [Hardcover]

Sarah Dunant
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)

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Book Description

25 Jun 2009

1570 in the Italian city of Ferrara, and the convent of Santa Caterina is filled with noble women who are married to Christ because many cannot find husbands outside. Enter sixteen-year-old Serafina, ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, howling with rage and hormones and determined to escape. While on the other side of the great walls, counter-reformation forces in the Church are pushing for change, inside, Serafina's spirit and defiance ignite a fire that threatens to engulf the whole convent.

SACRED HEARTS is a novel about power, creativity and passion - both of the body and of the soul. Hidden history brought alive by a wonderful storyteller, renowned for her Italian Renaissance novels.


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Product details

  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Virago (25 Jun 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1844085961
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844085965
  • Product Dimensions: 13.7 x 20.6 x 4.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 301,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

'Beautifully balanced, textured and thought-provoking, this is a revelatory read'
-- Sunday Times

'Dunant endows her characters with a humanity that captures the concern, not just the interest of the reader. They want and suffer, laugh and cry, just as we do' -- Donna Leon, Guardian

'Once again, Dunant delivers: SACRED HEARTS is a compelling historical fantasy that manages to simultaneously entertain and illuminate the reader' -- Sarah Vine, The Times

'The power of Dunant's imagination, the vigour of her scholarship and the lucidity of her style make this a novel that . . . is as intelligent as it is enjoyable' -- Amanda Craig, Daily Telegraph

'Vivid and entertaining' -- Rosie Blau, Financial Times

Review

'Once again, Dunant delivers: SACRED HEARTS is a compelling historical fantasy that manages to simultaneously entertain and illuminate the reader'

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
169 of 172 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant 2 July 2009
Format:Hardcover
Sarah Dunant's latest novel is set in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. The year is 1570. The story revolves around two women who had entered holy orders for different reasons. Serafina is a hot-headed 16-year old who had fallen in love with a man who was not her authoritarian father's choice as her husband, consequently she was condemned by him to spend the rest of her life as a nun. Zuana is in her thirties, the scholarly only child of a doctor who died suddenly and, with no prospects of marriage, was forced to enter the convent because she saw no other option. Both Serafina and Zuana struggle to adapt to the rigid lifestyle, and their triumphs and defeats are vividly portrayed. Sacred Hearts is patently a feminist novel, which compares the 16th century societal attitudes to women with those which prevail today. It is a very absorbing story, thought-provoking, sometimes horrifying, and very claustrophobic (all the action takes place within the convent walls). Whereas Sarah Dunant's earlier novel the Birth of Venus, also set in Italy, merely touched on the expression of feminine instincts, this one goes one step further, introducing betrayal and intrigue into a closed community where strong women can exercise real power, whereas in the outside world they had no power at all. The author brings her characters so vividly to life the reader has the impression of actually being in the convent with them. Five stars all the way.
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54 of 55 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Not all of them went willingly.... 15 Aug 2009
By Sensible Cat VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover
I was gripped from the moment I picked the book up and saw the ominous Historical Note - "By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply in Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched - at a much lesser price - to convents...Not all of them went willingly."

Serafina is sixteen years old and faces a lifetime of incarceration as the result of a forbidden flirtation discovered by her father. It is 1570 in the Italian city of Ferrara; the cultural flowering of the Renaissance is at its zenith, epressed in the glorious musical compositions flowing from the local nunnery, where her beautiful voice makes her a desirable commodity.

But Serafina has been locked up against her will. Furious, desperate, defiant and more than a little hysterical, she refuses to sing and is determined to escape. Hoping to diffuse the situation, and all too aware of the unsettling effect that a febrile novice can have on an enclosed community, the politically adept Abbess places her alongside another misfit, Suora Zuana. Raised by a remarkably open-minded physician father, Zuana entered the convent seventeen years ago after his death left her unmarriagable and alone; painfully, she has come to terms with her fate, and in fact recongises that her position as head of the Dispensary allows her responsibity and fulfilment that would probably be denied to her in the outside world.

Convent novels are ripe ground for cliches - hysteria, sexual tension, power politics and implied lesbianism.
... Read more ›
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125 of 129 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars riveting - and her best yet 7 July 2009
By A. Craig HALL OF FAME TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Serafina enters the Ferrara convent of Santa Caterina as its prisoner, screaming like a madwoman. At sixteen she's one of two nobleman's daughters, but there is only dowry enough for one suitable marriage.

Like Dunant's other two historical Italian novels, this is set in the Renaissance - or the tail-end of it - but where her first two heroines were bold rebels, the story is seen more through the eyes of a middle-aged nun who has embraced the cloistered life.It's a time of political and religious ferment Serafina's dowry to the convent makes her especially desirable, but she is also possessed of a heavenly voice which will add to the lustre of their famous choir. In time, they believe, Serafina will, like the rest, accept that convent life is preferable to the brutality of the world outside, and turn to the ideal bridegroom, Christ. What they do not know, initially, is that she is already passionately in love.

Stroppy and silent, Serafina seems reminiscent of many modern teenage girls, and many readers will smile at some of the scenes Dunant depicts. Nevertheless, she forms a relationship with the humane, scholarly herbalist Suora Zuana whose pupil she becomes. Zuana was the daughter of a doctor, educated and impoverished so that the convent offered her both refuge and intellectual freedom to experiment. A tension between youth and age, science and superstition, love and chastity is set up. The convent's all-female world is deformed both physically, in many cases, but also morally and intellectually, with religious mania threatening to break out over a mysterious old nun who showed the stigmata. Yet it also contains genuine goodness and compassion.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting - a must read! 10 Aug 2009
By SusieH
Format:Hardcover
Sacred Hearts

In 16th century Italy daughters of nobility were well married off if their families could afford sizable dowries, or they were shipped off to a convent to be brides of Christ.

Serafina turns down the suitor chosen by her family, because she has fallen for an unsuitable man. Her would be suitor chooses her flirtatious sister instead, and her father refuses to allow Serafina to follow her love. Her sister has a lavish wedding, but Serafina is taken to the convent of Santa Caterina in Ferrara. She is unwilling, sullen, and determined to get out just as soon as possible. All novices have the right, after one year in the convent, to seek audience with the Bishop, with the possibility of returning to the world, but she cannot bear to think of even waiting that long. She speaks little, stating simply "The words came from my mouth, not my heart" to ensure that all know she is there under duress, and her vows are therefore meaningless.

Serafina assists Suora Zuana who teaches her how to use herbs and to mix and administer medicines. They become close.

Life in the convent is enriched by the interesting characters of the nuns - the pure at heart, the rule breakers, the vain, the motherly - and Sarah Dunant brings them to life wonderfully.

Read this excellent book to find out what happens to Serafina. Highly recommended, and one to re-read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Great read
I really enjoyed this for the story and the historical background and also the interesting insights into how being a nun gave women a kind of power and fulfilment that would be... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Nick Meyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Sarah Dunant books
All her books are very good reads and good value for money when I download via Kindle at Amazon. Will download more soon
Published 8 days ago by Jac
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
This book is one not to miss. It delivers on every level, historical picture of life for many girls from wealthy families who were placed in convents if there was not enough money... Read more
Published 11 days ago by Rachel Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars Well written and surprisingly exciting!
I read this for Book Club and would not have personally chosen this as I don't really read historical fiction.
However this was really well written. Read more
Published 1 month ago by liz
5.0 out of 5 stars impressed
never read a story like this. It was so crammed with sheer intellligent drama. This book is wonderfully wrote its one not to missed and forgotten. Read more
Published 2 months ago by bookmoviefanatic
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting read about the goings in a convent. FAN-TAS-TIC !
A 16-year old girl is sent by her parents to a convent in Ferrara because she was involved in love affair that her parents did not approve. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jose
3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting historical read.
I am glad I read this book as it was very interesting, well written and well informed. It was a book I read in spurts as I did not find it wholly absorbing but neither did I want... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ellen Tannahill
2.0 out of 5 stars SACRED HEARTS.
On my wish list for longer than I care to think about, I finally got to read Sacred Hearts with my reading group and what a disappointment it was. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Petty Witter
5.0 out of 5 stars Scary
Well researched well written. I heard an adaptation on the radio, which filled me with sadness. The story hangs together and reaches a satisfactory conclusion but the content is... Read more
Published 4 months ago by L. Stribling
4.0 out of 5 stars What a time in history.
This was a beautifully and engaginly written book about the repression and lifelong cruelty that was sufered by man girls and grown women. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ms. C. A. Deans
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