Publication Date: 11th July 2024
Genre: Dark Historical Fiction
3.5 Stars (rounded up)
One Liner: A dark yet poignant read
17th Century, Rome
The plague has taken over the city. People are dropped dead in hundreds. Deep inside the Eternal City are the witches and sorceresses, hiding from those in power who are ever-ready to hang them in public.
Giulia has spent her life helping broken women from all parts of the society. She is a healer, midwife, abortionist and poisoner, depending on what the women need.
Pope Alessandro VII is determined to rid his city of the witches and the mysterious women, no matter what. Will he succeed? Can Giulia come out alive and escape the witch hunt?
The story comes in Guilia and Pope Alessandro VII’s first-person POVs in the present tense.
My Thoughts:
This is a dark book with several triggers (listed at the end). It is a fictional take on the life of Giulia Tofana, the woman who helped hundreds of women poison the men in their lives for various reasons (abuse mostly). I first read about her in the League of Lady Poisoners by Lisa Perrin. However, I confess it took me some time to connect the dots and realize that the book is about the same person.
The narrative starts with a prologue where Giulia and four other women are being hanged for witchcraft. So we already know how the book will end. Now, we go back to when Giulia was thirteen and first let into the secret world of her mother.
The content is pretty graphic and can be hard to read at a stretch. There’s a lot of abuse (physical & sexual), which makes it hard to keep going. The book openly shows what women faced from men (husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, clients, strangers, and just about everyone).
While I appreciate the first-person POV, I’m unsure why we get it in the present tense. Based on the prologue, this would have worked better in the past tense. Also, the voice is not too different, whether the FMC is thirteen or thirty-six. This would have made sense in the past tense.
However, I have to ask- why does the Pope get a first-person POV? This is a poisoner’s tale. It is supposed to be Giulia’s narrative. The Pope could have been limited third person. It would have been better and easier to keep the focus on the FMC.
As with most real-life-based retellings, this one also leaves me with mixed feelings. While I like that the FMC is a flawed person who made wrong decisions (which put others at risk), I’m not sure how it seems when comparing the book to a real person. As a character, Giulia makes a strong impression.
Sadly, I can’t say the same about her daughter who feels like a surreal butterfly or a spoiled brat. However, I do like the pattern we see here – the younger generation thinking it is better than the elders while making similar mistakes.
Tarot reading is one of the devices used for foreshadowing. No surprise that I liked how it played in the plot. I did find it ironic that the Hierophant card is called the Pope when the Church thinks things like tarot are a sin [Hierophant is the traditional head of spirituality (any religion), the masculine counterpart of High Priestess.] Of course, the card’s interpretation in the book aligns with Pope’s role in the story (and reality).
The abuse and torture are not too graphic but disturbing enough to affect the reader. Some of those details are necessary to show why the women did what they did and how they had to pay for it. And oh, some of those torture devices were used during the Goan Inquisition to covert people.
To summarize, A Poisoner's Tale is a dark, disturbing, and difficult read based on a real person. Make sure you are in the right mindset to read this one. There’s a bibliography at the end, which I appreciate.
Thank you, NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers (Bantam), for eARC.
#NetGalley #APoisonersTale
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TW: Pedophilia, rape (repeated), assault, domestic violence, miscarriage (deliberate), abortion, abuse, torture, hanging, strangling, plague (epidemic), torture
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