Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
zero stars, 8 Feb 2008
I was given this book for Christmas, by someone who knows that I like historical novels. Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of historical fiction I loathe, where the author is labouring under the delusion that just by setting the plot in the past, and cutting and pasting from various history books, they are going to create a realistic and convincing sense of the period, place and personality. As The Rossetti Letter is merely written by numbers (sex scene, tick; strong yet vulnerable and beautiful heroines, tick; ugly and reptilian villains, tick; gorgeous and wealthy fake love interest masquerading as a waiter, tick; gorgeous and real love interest hiding under a grumpy and ugly facade, tick), the plot might as well have been set in 21st-century America, and anybody interested in learning more about Venice (and finding a better plot, frankly) would be better off picking up a Rough Guide. I begrudge being obliged to give even one star to this turgid collection of badly-written cliches and stereotypes, but if it's enough to prevent anybody else from reading it, then so be it.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Truly dreadful!, 13 Nov 2007
This book could have had so much going for it. History, a glamorous location - Venice, Venetian Courtesans, political intrigue, but oh dear what a disappointment. It was poorly, sloppily,written, with stereotypical characters, cliche ridden and evil baddies. One almost expected Monty Python to appear with " no one expects the Spanish ( whoops Venetian!) Inquisition"!
When books like this are published it makes one despair. It is written by an American author, clearly for an undiscerning American market. At one point the modern history graduate heroine, turns to her history(!) student travelling companion, on landing in Italy, (the student had not heard of the 2nd World War - one wonders do they have an education system?), and instructs her that without the Americans, Europeans would all be speaking German! It is this crass, lack of respect that typifies this novel. If I had been in a gondola the book would have been confined to the watery depths!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Far better than the other reviews here might lead you to think, 15 Feb 2009
I picked this up from the library and when I checked the other reviews here my heart sank: another dud 'historical' I feared. However I was pleasantly surprised. While the Rossetti letter does indeed indulge both in cliches of plot as well as structure (interspersed sections set in past and present) the author does manage to pull it off. I'm not for a moment suggesting that this is great literature in any sense, but it is a well-written, suspenseful and quite intriguing novel in its own right.
The rather irritating Claire is writing her PhD on the Rossetti letter (rather oddly she's never been to Venice, the site of her thesis, and never seems to have consulted any primary sources...) a letter written to the Venice council by the courtesan Alessandra Rossetti revealing a Spanish conspiracy to invade Venice. But Rossetti disappears from history after the letter and no-one has ever understood the context in which the letter is written. Claire hears that a Cambridge academic is writing a book debunking her view of the conspiracy and so finally gets to go to Venice to prove him wrong.
Interspersed with this is the story of the rather lovely Alessandra Rossetti caught up in the margins of the conspiracy, and so we find out the true story of what happened alongside the modern day investigations.
I've never been to Venice (sadly) and so can't say whether the descriptions are accurate or not, but they certainly came over as magical and made we want to go. I agree with previous reviewers that characters are rather cliched but for me they worked. This is a fairly baroque novel (assassins, sword-fights, torture scenes, hangings) but accepted on that level it works far better than many other historical novels.
The modern day part was less successful (the girl who hadn't heard of the war was a 14 year old... not so surprising, unfortunately), and the neatly tied-up ending was irritating but overall this was a far more enjoyable novel than I expected. Great for a bit of historical romance before bed or on the tube with minor shades of Possession Possession: A Romance.
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