Bitter Greens

August 1, 2014
Forsyth blends fact and fiction in a novel that combines the story of a young woman with long hair who's been locked in a tower with the tale of the real-life Frenchwoman who wrote the story we know as "Rapunzel." After King Louis XIV banishes his cousin Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force to a convent in 1697, she has a hard time getting used to a life of austerity and isolation in the French countryside. She misses the excitement and luxury of the daring, robust court life she once led and yearns for the young husband for whom she renounced her religion. An elderly nun takes Charlotte-Rose under her wing and, as they tend the nunnery's garden, relates the story of Margherita, a young Venetian girl imprisoned in a remote tower by an evil sorceress. The witch, La Strega Bella, weaves tresses into the girl's fiery mane and regularly uses her long locks to climb the tower in order to bring Margherita food and extract droplets of her blood. The magical tales of the girl and the sorceress unfold in segments around Charlotte-Rose's first-person account of her tenuous positions as a ward of the court, a Huguenot and a headstrong female who sometimes risks the king's wrath to pursue her own interests or help others. Her story serves as a balance between Margherita's innocence as she secretly explores the tower and makes a ghastly discovery and La Strega Bella's shadowy actions, which feed her obsession for maintaining eternal youth. Each of the three finds love, but the outcomes of their relationships differ. Despite many lusty encounters that add little substance to the tale, Forsyth undertakes an ambitious plot and, with a creative presentation, makes it work. She convincingly conveys a fairy tale-like quality in her writing and peppers the narrative with historical detail and some interesting twists that neatly tie together the strands of the story. This unconventional spin on a children's classic is a captivating read and unquestionably aimed toward adults.

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Starred review from June 15, 2014

Once there was a young woman living in the heart of Louis XIV's French court who dared to speak her mind, write, and fall in love, only to be banished to a convent because she could not hold her tongue. Many years earlier in Venice, a young girl was kidnapped and locked away in a tower by an evil witch. Australian novelist Forsyth (The Witches of Eileanan; The Wild Girl), in her U.S. hardcover debut, ties these two seemingly unrelated stories together to form a stunning interwoven tale based on the real-life story of Charlotte-Rose de la Force, the storyteller behind the most well-known version of Rapunzel. Charlotte-Rose's account of survival and hope is paired with that of her famous fairy tale heroine as both women face extraordinary circumstances. VERDICT Forsyth, a PhD candidate in fairy tale retellings, reflects her depth of knowledge in this captivating novel that enchants with its gorgeous narrative and memorable characters who discover how the choices we make define and bind us. Full of palace intrigue, dark magic, romance, and lush, evocative descriptions, this is historical fiction at its finest.--Katie Lawrence, Chicago

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2014
I had always been a great talker and teller of tales, declares Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, the largely forgotten seventeenth-century author among whose tales is Rapunzel. This fictionalized biography dramatizes the scandals and intrigues that marked her checkered career at the court of the Sun King Louis XIV and that resulted in her exile to a nunnery. There a strangely worldly nun, Soeur Seraphina, tells her the story of Rapunzel (here called Margherita) and also that of Selena Leonelli, aka La Strega, the witch who imprisoned Rapunzel in that famous tower. These two richly imagined stories intertwine like Rapunzel's hair with that of Charlotte-Rose's life and loves, all of which, alas, ended unhappily. This makes for a very long historical romance that is sometimes frustrating as it switches back and forth among the three episodic stories. However, fans of this type of fiction will doubtless be enchanted by the operatic nature of the stories and the fascinating historical details of life at Louis' court.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)