I am so
happy I decided to go and check it out as it is one of the best historical
fantasy novels I have ever read!
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| 'Bitter Greens' by Kate Forsyth |
Kate Forsyth
has magically woven together history and folklore in this retelling of the
classic fairy tale Rapunzel, where you can’t tell where one ends and the other
begins, where they meld so beautifully together.
The
narrative revolves around three female leads and their stories knitted together
creating a story within a story around a memoir.
Charlotte-Rose
de la Force, an effervescent French aristocrat, with an appetite for writing
and a spirit that will not be constricted, struggling with to come to terms
with life in a convent following several scandalous affairs at her time in
court during the reign of the Sun King;
Margherita,
the Rapunzel of the story and a peasant girl stolen from her parents and
imprisoned in a tower, kept company by the skeletons of the girls who came
before her;
Selena
Lioneli, a Venetian courtesan with a ruinous past that has warped her outlook
on life generating her belief in nothing but the value of her own beauty.
Three
exceptionally prevailing characters, each with their own trials and
tribulations in life, linked through fate, magic and dark secrets across the
ages.
Forsyth
manages to break the mould of the traditional fairy tale, shaking our knowledge
of the Disney version we all know and challenging the reader to rethink our
predispositions.
Giving way
to strong women who don't just wait around to be rescued (of course the
exception being she who is stuck in the tower, but it wasn't for a lack of
trying in her case).
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