Average Rating
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art.The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
Fiction
Fiction » Historical Fiction
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Most recent 5 reviews out of 11
Submitted by Erin A in Bartlesville,
This was a very unique, but good read! (listen!) The story kept me interested from the start. Great historical fiction!!!
Submitted by Anonymous in Seattle,
Really enjoyed the historic background setting for this audiobook. The characters were so intriguing and revealing for this period of time. I'll look forward to listening to more of Sarah Dunant's novels.
Submitted by Anonymous
Pleasantly entertaining but not riveting. The voice of the female narrator was too old to convincingly read out the dialog of the main character, a very young sensual woman.
Submitted by Anonymous
The story itself may not be so bad but the reader of the story was so "old" that I found it difficult to imagine her to be a young teen who got married so early in her life.
I don't think I would recommend it ...I used it as a filler until all my Outlander books trickled in.
Submitted by Anonymous in San Ramon,
After the first track or two I almost stopped listening. Somehow it didn't grab me really quickly. However, after a little while I was really drawn in to the story and ended up really enjoying the book.
Genres 
Biographies
