About the Book:

The truth is, none of us are innocent. We all have sins to confess.

So reveals Catherine de Medici in this brilliantly imagined novel about one of history’s most powerful and controversial women. To some she was the ruthless queen who led France into an era of savage violence. To others she was the passionate savior of the French monarchy. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter into the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power.

The last legitimate descendant of the illustrious Medici line, Catherine suffers the expulsion of her family from her native Florence and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an enraged mob. While still a teenager, she is betrothed to Henri, son of François I of France, and sent from Italy to an unfamiliar realm where she is overshadowed and humiliated by her husband’s lifelong mistress. Ever resilient, Catherine strives to create a role for herself through her patronage of the famous clairvoyant Nostradamus and her own innate gift as a seer. But in her fortieth year, Catherine is widowed, left alone with six young children as regent of a kingdom torn apart by religious discord and the ambitions of a treacherous nobility.

Relying on her tenacity, wit, and uncanny gift for compromise, Catherine seizes power, intent on securing the throne for her sons. She allies herself with the enigmatic Protestant leader Coligny, with whom she shares an intimate secret, and implacably carves a path toward peace, unaware that her own dark fate looms before her—a fate that, if she is to save France, will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and the passion of her embattled heart.

From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

I believe that some people are simply born larger than life.  They came into this world with a destiny aimed at changing the world with dramatic effect, and cannot leave it until they have left their mark.  Sometimes this is the result of the individual and the magnitude of their spirit/personality, and sometimes it is through the inherent nature of the family they were born into.  In the case of Catherine de Medici I believe both of these reason apply.  This is a life that simply invites books and stories to be written about her — and is the subject of a great deal of speculation.  And in the hands of a the right author I believe that this is a book that would dramatically influence everyone that reads it.  Unfortunately, this book didn’t quite rise to the challenge.

What I did like about this book was the presentation of the challenges that women faced in past generations.  The view of women as chattel; good for nothing more than running the house hold, giving birth to children (preferably male children), and being used as political mergers between nations, families and kings is an image that makes almost all modern women shudder in horror.  And yet — with this role came a great deal of power when a particularly intelligent woman found the ways to exercise her influence over the men around her — to her own designs.  Gortner has done an excellent job of presenting Catherine de Medici as a woman of intelligence, cunning, insight, and fortitude.  (Weather right or wrong, I leave that judgment call to others).  Gortner presents her as a woman that had a personality sufficient to the task to overcome her background, and stop the cycle of her being used as a pawn in the international power struggle between church and state — not to mention the vying for power between nations.  I just wish that the other characters in the book had been as well developed.

What really frustrated me about the book was enough to break it, at least from my perception.  There is an over-all feeling of rushing the story, which I, as a reader, found very distracting.  I constantly felt like Gortner was telling me the story of the people without explaining the setting, or other elements that went into motivating the characters as a whole.  Overall, I felt that Gortner was simply rushing to get the book written, and not really taking the time to tell the story. I understand that the balancing between character development, setting, and plot is challenging, if not impossible in certain books.  But this book just seemed to neglect most of it, which in the end left the story feeling flat, and without personality.

Tags: Catherine de Medici, Family, France, Government, Historical Fiction, Medici, Politics

Category: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Politics