Book Review: The Remedy by Michelle Lovric
Apr. 3rd, 2012 02:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: The Remedy
Author: Michelle Lovric
Published: New York: Regan, 2005
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 136 of 440
Total Page Count: 113,330
Text Number: 327
Read Because: personal enjoyment, purchased from Powell's $1 shelf
Review: A historical romance-cum-drama set in the underbellies of 1780s London and Venice. I could finish reading this—it's overlong but not poorly paced on the whole, and the prose is often laborious and strangely stilted, but far from unreadable—but I don't want to. There's little to intrigue, here, despite the richness of the historical setting: what opens well with the story of a young recalcitrant nun devolves into an insipid romance, and while there's a hint of conspiracy in the background details, Lovric does her best to overshadow them with the awkward coupling of two unlikable people. In the most mundane and offputting sense, there's a shadow of the grotesque across the book: blatant fat-shaming, greasy and petty characters, and only the thinnest sort of passion at its heart. My appetite is for fantasy of manners-style historical drama, richer and more intriguing, finding depth in the darkest corners; The Remedy manages none of that, and so it's not to my taste—and, frankly, I can find nothing else to redeem it. It would be a waste of my time to finish reading it, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Michelle Lovric
Published: New York: Regan, 2005
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 136 of 440
Total Page Count: 113,330
Text Number: 327
Read Because: personal enjoyment, purchased from Powell's $1 shelf
Review: A historical romance-cum-drama set in the underbellies of 1780s London and Venice. I could finish reading this—it's overlong but not poorly paced on the whole, and the prose is often laborious and strangely stilted, but far from unreadable—but I don't want to. There's little to intrigue, here, despite the richness of the historical setting: what opens well with the story of a young recalcitrant nun devolves into an insipid romance, and while there's a hint of conspiracy in the background details, Lovric does her best to overshadow them with the awkward coupling of two unlikable people. In the most mundane and offputting sense, there's a shadow of the grotesque across the book: blatant fat-shaming, greasy and petty characters, and only the thinnest sort of passion at its heart. My appetite is for fantasy of manners-style historical drama, richer and more intriguing, finding depth in the darkest corners; The Remedy manages none of that, and so it's not to my taste—and, frankly, I can find nothing else to redeem it. It would be a waste of my time to finish reading it, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
