Blood and Beauty: The Borgias

Summary (from the publisher):
The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels—The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Hearts—has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. Now Sarah Dunant turns her discerning eye to one of the world’s most intriguing and infamous families—the Borgias—in an engrossing work of literary fiction.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and family—in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia—in order to succeed.

Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.

Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood & Beauty is a majestic novel that breathes life into this astonishing family and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex and relentless.

Review: I won a copy of this book as a giveaway on Goodreads.

Blood and Beauty is an imaginative retelling of the infamous Borgias, who rose to power through the Roman church in the fifteenth century. As the author says in the reader's guide, the Borgia family has all the makings of a juicy novel, "glamour, beauty, tribal loyalty, sexual misdemeanor, power, corruption, and high-octane emotional drama" (519). Corrupt almost beyond compare, the family bought and murdered its way to the papacy, upon which Rodrigo Borgia proceeded ensuring his four illegitimate children secured the family lineage through marriages, titles, and wealth. The Borgias sleep with their brothers' wives, murder their sister's husband, and think nothing of killing off those that would stand in their way.

Written in a style that seemed to emulate the writing of Hilary Mantel, the narrative voice is sly, with a very tongue-in-cheek, dry wit that spares no character from mockery. "And finally the papal cap. It fits awkwardly over the broad baldness of his tonsure. He squints into the shine of the brass vase: his white hair sitting like a ruffle of piped cream around a cake, the great eagle nose jutting out beneath. So, the biggest hat is too small. Well, it will do until there is another made. He stands back, lifting his right arm and bringing it down in a solemn gesture of blessing, the wonder of it all flooding through him, and it is all he can do not to cry out in triumph again" (28).

Yet at the same time, the narrative voice seemed almost too distant from the characters, especially in the opening chapters of the book, making it difficult to get a feel for the characters themselves until well into the novel. In this way too does this latest novel by Dunant mimic Mantel; the author does not give all away but insists that the reader work to uncover the truth of the characterization between the pages.

Of course I felt the most sympathy for Lucrezia, the Pope's daughter, although I think that is to be expected in a time period where women had little power and an even smaller voice. Surrounded by a power hungry and ruthless family of men, she was bound to suffer in the process. "Every woman who walks through the world knows there are two roads: a wide, triumphal route for the men, and a second mean little alley for women. Freedom is so much men's due that even to draw attention to it is to make them angry" (313).

Overall, a more skillfully and artfully written historical fiction novel than many, although I'll be curious to see how Dunant's sequel to this book will play out.

Stars: 4