Maddalena and the Dark
A Novel
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“[A] beguiling fairy tale.” —Vanity Fair (A Best Book of Summer)
“Enchanted...A slow-burn gothic novel that will make you lose track of your surroundings…An atmospheric banger.” —LitHub
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.
After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way. When she invites Luisa into her plans, promising to make her dreams come true, Luisa doesn’t hesitate. But every wager has its price, and as the girls are drawn into the decadent world outside the Pietà’s walls, they must decide what it is they truly want—and what they will do to pay for it.
Lush and heady, swirling with music and magic, Maddalena and the Dark is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between two girls and the boundless desire that will set them free, if it doesn’t consume them first.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fine (The Upstairs House) beguiles with this decadent tale of desire set in 18th-century Venice. Luisa, a 15-year-old orphan, is raised at the all-girls conservatory Ospedale della Pietà, where composer Don Antonio Vivaldi is concertmaster and Luisa dreams of becoming a star violinist. Her life is upended by the arrival of Maddalena Grimani—a charming girl of noble birth, sent to the conservatory in hopes that a modest education will dispel rumors of her illegitimacy and increase her marriage prospects. The two girls embark on an intimate friendship, holding hands during mass and covertly sharing a bed, and Maddalena reveals a powerful secret she's discovered: the sea grants wishes in exchange for offerings. Maddalena encourages Luisa to cast her own wish: to become the Pietà's best violinist. But as Luisa's wish is realized and her enchanting performances capture the attention of Vivaldi and later those of the men in Maddalena's life, Maddalena makes another wish of her own—that she'll have Luisa's undivided affection. Maddalena's wish sets the girls on a path of increasingly dangerous covenants with the sea that threaten to destroy everything they've attained. Fine delivers a masterly exploration of the shifting power dynamics of the protagonists' relationship, particularly as Maddalena's devotion to Luisa curdles into obsession. With the alluring Venice backdrop, this will frighten and captivate in equal measure.
