In A Dark Wood Wandering
The novella In A Dark Wood Wandering weaves two storylines through the modern day and early Renaissance Florence.
Leaving behind a depersonalised world, a young woman seeks a retreat in a convent in the hills above Florence. Here, she soon discovers, is an Irish Mother Superior with a Machiavellian agenda against a communist mayor and invading archeologists. She soon has 'la donna bella' helping exhume some old graves at the convent, some of which date back to early Renaissance time.
In one of the graves she unexpectedly finds the remains of a young woman of wealth, buried with her child - and someone else. This is the woman from the other storyline. A daughter of a newly-rich merchant and a greedy mother, she is unusual for her time in that her father has taught her to read. The day before her father finalises her arranged marriage, he takes to the Badia, to hear Boccaccio reading from the works of Dante. Whilst there, her life is irrevocably changed.
Through the interweaving of these worlds, both young women – unnamed throughout the novella -–learn not only how to lose loss but also that to be un-noticed is not synonymous with invisibility, or worthlessness. Both learn to see themselves.
The novella In A Dark Wood Wandering weaves two storylines through the modern day and early Renaissance Florence.
Leaving behind a depersonalised world, a young woman seeks a retreat in a convent in the hills above Florence. Here, she soon discovers, is an Irish Mother Superior with a Machiavellian agenda against a communist mayor and invading archeologists. She soon has 'la donna bella' helping exhume some old graves at the convent, some of which date back to early Renaissance time.
In one of the graves she unexpectedly finds the remains of a young woman of wealth, buried with her child - and someone else. This is the woman from the other storyline. A daughter of a newly-rich merchant and a greedy mother, she is unusual for her time in that her father has taught her to read. The day before her father finalises her arranged marriage, he takes to the Badia, to hear Boccaccio reading from the works of Dante. Whilst there, her life is irrevocably changed.
Through the interweaving of these worlds, both young women – unnamed throughout the novella -–learn not only how to lose loss but also that to be un-noticed is not synonymous with invisibility, or worthlessness. Both learn to see themselves.
The novella In A Dark Wood Wandering weaves two storylines through the modern day and early Renaissance Florence.
Leaving behind a depersonalised world, a young woman seeks a retreat in a convent in the hills above Florence. Here, she soon discovers, is an Irish Mother Superior with a Machiavellian agenda against a communist mayor and invading archeologists. She soon has 'la donna bella' helping exhume some old graves at the convent, some of which date back to early Renaissance time.
In one of the graves she unexpectedly finds the remains of a young woman of wealth, buried with her child - and someone else. This is the woman from the other storyline. A daughter of a newly-rich merchant and a greedy mother, she is unusual for her time in that her father has taught her to read. The day before her father finalises her arranged marriage, he takes to the Badia, to hear Boccaccio reading from the works of Dante. Whilst there, her life is irrevocably changed.
Through the interweaving of these worlds, both young women – unnamed throughout the novella -–learn not only how to lose loss but also that to be un-noticed is not synonymous with invisibility, or worthlessness. Both learn to see themselves.