Sarah Dunant - Sacred Hearts

review by Babs Simspon on show 3rd November
By the second half of the 16th Century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply within Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were despatched - for a much lower price - into convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city states of Italy, up to half of all noblewomen became nuns. Not all of them willingly.
This novel tells the story of one of these unhappy girls - 16-year-old Serafina - ripped by her family from an illicit love affair and forced into the convent of Santa Catarina, renowned for its superb music. Her first days of incarceration are absolutely ghastly and Serafina is hysterical, distraught and terrified. Hardly surprising as she is so young and in what amounts to a prison for the rest of her life. She desperately seeks a way out of this terrible place, seemingly impossible, but knowing her lover will be waiting, she begins to realise that she is more likely to achieve her freedom if she appears to accept the strict regime of the convent. She accepts the friendship of Siser Zuana and works alongside her in the infirmary.

Serafina has a glorious singing voice which, at first, she refuses to use until she realises that this, too, may help in her desperate quest to escape.

This is a remarkable book. The reader is as desperate as poor Serafina herself - the dreadful unforgiving strictness of convent life, the peculiarities of the different nuns, and, above all, the terrible hopelessness of her situation. 16th Century Italy is brought vividly to life, the dankness of the cold dark convent, the smells, the sheer grinding misery of it all, but you are so afraid for poor Serafina, all this fades into the background.

It is an amazing story - intelligent, moving and illuminating. Sarah Dunnant is a truly great writer.