Customer Reviews

The Venetian Mask: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading "To Dance with Kings" I made it my mission to read all of Rosalind Laker's novels. After "The Golden Tulip" I begin to see a pattern, which was confirmed with this novel "The Venetian Mask." You see, while the plot of her novels may vary greatly from one book to another, all of her books seem to have two things in common-each female heroine must have some association with the arts through creative means (fan making, mask making, silver design, painting, silk weaving, building furniture, jewelry....) and it seems each of her novels at least some of the following aspects: an evil male (bent on marrying one of our hapless heroines and then ruining her life) at least one heroine (who's hair will be some hue of read) lovers parted (tragically but they seem to get over it in time) and a marriage of convenience from which love will bloom. For all I know though, these elements are common ground for novels that are more about romance than anything else, as Lakers are (in spite of the tons of interesting historical information she packs in.)

"The Venetian Mask" has all the elements of a Laker novel but that doesn't make it unoriginal. The setting alone in historical, secretive and magical Venice and the historical information that goes along with it makes this novel unique. It starts with Marietta a girl who works with her mother in a mask making shop and the last mask her mother will ever make, which will play a significant role in her daughters life. Shortly thereafter the mother dies, leaving her daughter to have her voice trained in one of Venice's charity orphanages, renowned for the quality of their musical orphans.

It is at the Ospedale della Pietà that Marietta will spend her years until adulthood, accompanied by another orphaned girl, her new best friend, Elena. Together they will go through childhood adventures and adult heartbreak until circumstances of marriage force them into the midst of a centuries old Venetian family vendetta and the two are forbidden to meet. But these two girls (both with hair in hues of red of some sort) refuse to be kept down. And in a city renowned for its Carnival, where safely lies behind masks, anyone in Venice can do anything....as long as people don't know who you are....

Sadly while Marietta's marriage blossoms, Elena's is a nightmare of darkness and abuse and soon the novel spins into a whirlwind of drama including baby switching, murder attempts, faked treason trials, seduction of innocent Pietà girls and even more. Add in the French Revolution and you've got yourself a novel packed full of intrigue, drama and multiple creative uses for Venetian masks.

Which is typical for Laker-you want to read her books; you get a soap opera of drama and romance, good and bad. And of course, being set in Venice, a city whose very culture is built of secrets, this one has to step it up.

There is no question that "The Venetian Mask" is an enjoyable novel. I liked it better than "The Golden Tulip" because it lacked the character problems and there wasn't any thing that could have been cut from the book and still have the story hold together. But I'm afraid that for me it will never eclipse "To Dance with Kings", which if definitely the best of Laker's work I've read so far.

The only big problem with this novel is that there is so much going on that we hear about through character talk instead of reading about with our own eyes. I know to write the whole thing down would make the book longer and maybe break some sort of suspense Laker was trying to create but I can't help thinking that it would have been a better book had all those missing scenes been included.

This is definitely a novel for a historical fiction lover who likes more than a fare share of drama and romance along with their history facts (and this is pumped full of them) and as long as you don't mind a little bit of similarity with Laker's past works, and a novel that focuses more on the romance and the drama it creates than anything else you'll most likely find a couple of very enjoyable days reading "The Venetian Mask", as I did.

Three point five stars.

The only way I can really describe the experience of reading Rosalind Laker's book is with a half-hearted "meh." I didn't finish it- not because I HATED it, but because it just didn't draw me in at all and I felt no great desire to find out what happened next.

I found the writing inelegant- there several instances of Laker telling readers exactly what was going through characters' minds, even when it was obvious (i.e., "Are you alright?" he asked anxiously. He was anxious to know that she was alright). I also thought the female characters were terribly one-dimensional in that they were without fault, the beautiful (but of course, completely oblivious to their beauty) victims of circumstances beyond their control.

There is nothing wrong with this type of writing, I suppose, and I'm sure that if there hadn't been many other books calling out to me to be read, I might have continued reading it through to the end. But about 150 pages in, I just didn't have any real interest in the story or the characters, and so I decided to move to something else. I do like historical fiction and historical romance as a genre, but I like the Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen type novels, which are full of witty repartee and memorable conversation; Laker does not, in my opinion stack up.

Overall, I don't think this was a bad book, but I also don't think it was memorable, and I believe that there are many historical fiction authors out there who do better than Laker did.

The atmosphere of eighteenth-century Venice is exciting and exotic. It's a world completely different from anything our modern world can offer. Laker provides vivid, lush descriptions of Venetian masks, fashions, architecture, and politics. Through her prose it is easy to envision the world Marietta and Elena live in.

But while Venice is beautifully fleshed out, Marietta and Elena are not. The two women are fairly interchangeable, with no defining characteristic between the two of them. Then men are little better; all men are lusty but the 'good' ones rein in their desire until wedding bells ring and the 'bad' ones rape and take what they want. The characters, in summary, are not particularly likable because they lack dimension and depth. For this same reason, they aren't especially repulsive or horrible, either.

The plot is predictable, but enjoyable. I did have fun reading the book, although the writing is nothing exceptional. The ending is too contrived and ties up far too neatly, but the rest of the novel's pacing and action worked well enough.

Is this a book I'd recommend? No, there are far more I'd mention first. Is it a book I would read again? Probably not. But is it a bad book? Not at all. If someone I know is reading it, I would be happy to discuss the book with them. Anyone reading this review, I'm not at all discouraging you from reading this! Go for it!

The Venetian Mask by Rosalind Laker is an engrossing novel of childhood, love, betrayals and mostly the enduring power of friendship. The setting is 1770's Venice and the 2 central women meet as orphans in the Ospedale orphanage. Their futures are not theirs to choose but the women are strong when faced with terrible trials and tribulations. They endure with dignity and passion. It showed not only the power of friendship but the strength of will that these women needed to persevere and thrive under oppressive and sometimes brutal conditions. The love stories are epic and make you weep when forces conspire to part the lovers.

I was quite pleased with this book since it had so many turns that were unexpected. It is easy to become jaded as an avid reader because plot lines become very predictable. Not so with this one. I found myself saying "No Way!" several times throughout the book. It is one of the joys of reading to find surprises around every corner. This book will bring you to all range of emotions. What a gem!

On the surface, The Venetian Mask is about love and friendship, and what one will do for them. In this novel, set in late-18th century Venice when the Venetian Republic was on the verge of collapse, two friends, Marietta and Elena, come together at the Ospedale della Pieta, where both are choir girls. Eventually both fall in love, but ultimately end up marrying men who are bitter rivals: Marietta marries the politically revolutionary (and practically a soothsayer) Domenica Torrisi, head of the Torrisi family, and Elena marries the cruel patriarch of the Celano clan, Filippo. Both women navigate their way through their respective marriages while ultimately trying to stay true to one another.

The major, obvious plus about the book is its setting. Venice here is much more than a place; it's a character, too, and it leaps off the page. We witness everything that makes La Serenissima great, from Carnivale to the Marriage of the Sea ceremony, to the Inquisition and the inner workings of the Venetian judicial system, which wasn't quite judicial (and we're also introduced to the wells and Leads, two eerie prisons in the basement of the Doge's palace, and the anonymous accusation boxes, in which any Venetian citizen could accuse another of anything).

I also enjoyed the plot of The Venetian Mask. The novel is heavily plot driven, and there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns.

My only problem with the novel is the characters; they're a little too wooden and one-dimensional. Filippo is a stereotype, as is Alix, Marietta's first love. And Elena and Marietta could be nearly indistinguishable from one another. But as I've said, the book is mostly plot-driven; despite its flaws, The Venetian Mask is a wonderful story about love in a time period that changed modern Europe. The Venice in which the novel takes place has disappeared, but the spirit of it is still there.

I've been binging on historical novels lately. I'm not exactly certain as to why this is a genre that I keep coming back to, but I do enjoy them a great deal, and it's a great way to explore times and places that I haven't had much time to study in more traditional ways. One author that I've been taking another look at is Rosalind Laker, who tends to blend not just history, but also art as one of her topics in her novels.

A recent reprint has been The Venetian Mask, set in the hectic days of the city-state in the late eighteenth century. Marietta, a young girl, has worked beside her mother all of her life, learning how to craft the extravagant masks so popular during Carnival season. When she is left an orphan by her mother's death, she joins a charity hospital, the Pieta, a school that takes in the orphan girls of Venice and trains them to sing in a renowned choir. Among the other girls, her very best friend is Elena, a blond vocalist who shares Marietta's own liveliness. Together they find themselves not just applauded for their voices, but also their voices, and find themselves courted by several young men.

For Elena, it is the heir of the Celano family, Marco, who wants to marry her, and soon she is living with his family, and learning the ways of a great lady of Venice. His family, however, isn't quite so happy at her arrival, especially her witch of a mother-in-law to be, and Filippo, Marco's brother, who wants Elena for himself.

Marietta finds herself falling for an attractive young Frenchman, Alix, who promises that he will make her his wife, but what the young lovers are not counting on is the opposition from his friends and family, who feel that he could do much better than this nobody. When the worst happens, Marietta finds herself taken under the protection of a powerful nobleman, Domenico Torisi, a man who is both smart and sensitive, and who has an unknown tie to Marietta.

But badly for everyone involved, there is also the long vendetta between the Celanos and the Torisis. Murder, lies and a heartbreaking choice bor the two friends is what is at the center of the novel, and gives momentum to this story of a city on the verge of losing its empire to Napoleon's armies.

Let's be honest, this is a historical romance novel. Love and passion is certainly the centre of this novel, and it shows. A very great portion of the story is given over to lovers mooning over each other, jealousy, and every single emotion. But to leaven that there are plenty of duels, wicked plots, details of daily living and the riches of Venice.

One aspect of Rosalind Laker's writing is that she tends (so far) to focus on the artistic endevours of the time. Besides the music of the time, there are discussions of art, clothing, the political manueverings, what a Doge was, and a plethora of little details that create a very vivid picture of the time and place. This is one reason why I enjoy reading historical novels so much, and why I've gotten to enjoy Laker's work so much.

Now for the bad news. There is a huge flaw running through this one, and it's one of the worst faults that a novelist can make. A great deal of the story is told, not shown, to the reader, and it has the effect of keeping the reader at arms' length. What truly annoyed me is that the author would be telling an exciting section of her character's lives, and then jumps to this telling me what was happening to this or that person, with the end result that I felt very removed from the story, when what I really wanted was to be in the middle of all this. Throughout the novel, she does this, and I nearly, very nearly, flung the book at the wall in disgust.

Another problem were the male characters, all of them either very two-dimensional, or so impossibly good or evil that they eventually became boring to read about. Now, Domenico is interesting in that he is a truly noble man, and what he goes through does make him a character worth noticing. It's just that I kept hoping that he would show some sort of character flaw or something to knock him off his pedestal.

Summing up, this is a typical historical novel that goes the 'rags-to-riches' route, and several times over at that. While Laker's style is very engaging and descriptive, there are some serious problems with this one. As it is, it barely scrapes into the four-star league, and that only because I found one of the heroes very interesting to read about, and I got to learn a bit about eighteenth century Venice while I was going through it. If that's your topic of interest, you might like it, just expect some tough going in places. Otherwise you may want to skip it, until you have a long weekend and don't mind having to wade through the errors.

In any case, I intend to find of Laker's work in the future, and I hope that Three Rivers Press continues to bring her backlist into print again. This is a trade paperback reprint of a 1992 edition.

Recommended.

This is a beautiful 18th Century novel of two best friends from the world famous orphanage, Ospedale della Pieta, in Venice, Italy. Rosalind Laker has done an incredible job researching with historical accuracy, the life and times of Venice's different social classes, as well as the political and geographical setting. The novel delightfully twists and turns much as Venice's canals, and it really will keep you turning the pages long into the night!

I really enjoyed 'The Golden Tulip' by Rosiland Laker, but after reading 'The Venetian Mask' I actually think I like this novel more. The narrative structure is slightly better, although both novels are very interesting.
Rosiland Laker paints the most magnificant picture of life as a Pieta girl. The main characters Marietta and Elena are very well-developed, and it is easy to become attached to them both. The situation they find themselves in makes this book very difficult to put down. The author has come up with a very good storyline.
I recommend this novel to anyone with a love of Venice, or the love of exciting historical page-turners. This book had me up into the early hours, as I just couldn't go to bed without knowing what happened next.
The only reason I gave this novel 4 stars as opposed to 5 is because the ending was slightly rushed- but perhaps that is me wishing the story would never end.

A sweeping, magnificent story of two young women whose lives intertwine and diverge in endlessly intriguing ways. Laker's rich historical details and colorful descriptions bring this fascinating chapter of Venetian history to life while drawing us ever more deeply into the tangled lives of the two orphans who are the story's centerpiece.

The story begins at the Pieta, the legendary home for foundling girls where Vivaldi taught music for most of his life. Although "The Venetian Mask" takes place some 30 years after the famous Red Priest's death, the lingering shadow of his music seems to penetrate the institution's very walls, lending an element of enchantment to this totally absorbing and delightful historical saga.

Sarah Bruce Kelly
Author of THE RED PRIEST'S ANNINA

Sure, this book is highly formulaic, like Rosalind Laker's other works, but that must be overlooked in the grand scheme of things: having a book to read that is entertaining and enjoyable. It was nice to see a different side of the Pieta, an orphanage where young girls would sing and perform for wealthy Venetians. If you have read the book "The Four Seasons: A novel of Vivaldi's Venice," then I think you will enjoy this slightly more upbeat, less musically detailed description of the whole Pieta system. Another thing I found fascinating about this novel was descriptions of making masks and the masks themselves.

Final Verdict:

Don't expect any surprises, but expect to be charmed though Laker's view of Venice.