I'm counting this as read because I got through most of it. The premise is cool, and the first 100+ pages. It's about a bunch of partisans in Occupied Italy. Down with Mussolini and down with the Nazis! But, the rest of it is a little muddy. Juicy subject heading: World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Fiction.
This meticulously researched book was perhaps too meticulously researched. It felt like Sarah Dunant needed to include every salacious tidbit she gleaned about 16th century Italian nuns. That's not to say it's a bad book. I liked it okay; I just thought it tried to tell too many stories and was about 100 pages too long. First there's the noble woman sent off to the nunnery against her will story (happened all the time at the time), then the anorexic nun story, both with subplots about the strict yet fanciful novice mistress, the political abbess, and the dispensary nun who herself had been resistant to her "calling."
