Poison

Harrison's novel of the Spanish Inquisition is a visionary, mystical drama narrated by a victim of the Inquisition, Francisca de Luarca, daughter of a silk farmer and his unfortunately fecund wife, Concepcion.Right at the beginning Harrison takes a risk, letting the reader know her narrator is, at 28, languishing between tortures in the dungeons, her father ruined, her mother a previous victim of the madness of the times, her lover dead. And in the palace above her lies a woman born on the same day as Francisca, Maria Luisa, Queen of Spain, dying of poison.With this ending in store, why read further? But among Harrison's gifts is that of arousing curiosity. From the first page, the reader wants to know how every event came to pass. Francisca's father, a dreamer like his daughter, burns his mulberry trees and plants a new improved strain which the worms will not eat."From this time forward, with my grandfather dead and Papa ruined, the fortunes of the Luarca family would be left to the ingenuity of its women. Hardly a bad thing, on the face of it, as Luarca women lacked for neither talent nor tenacity. In fact, my mother was soon discovered to possess a rare gift, and it was this gift which provided her passport to the palace. It was this gift that would save us for a time, before it also brought destruction."With each small leap into a more terrible future, Harrison spins a strong cord binding her reader deeper into the story. The narrative is Francisca's but from the beginning her life runs in tandem with that of Spain's future queen, Marie Louise de Bourbon, niece of Louis XIV, a girl who couldn't be more different from Francisca and whose life actually crosses hers only twice.Francisca's dreams turn to ashes as they come to pass. Marie Louise, too carefree to dream, is plunged into a painful reality as soon as she crosses the border from France to Spain. It seems entirely natural, in Harrison's hands, that Francisca should reveal the new queen's most intimate thoughts and emotions as her horror grows, yoked to a grotesque and impotent man. For dreams, Maria Luisa (as she now is) must turn to opium.As the queen, a faithful wife, is more and more reviled for childlessness, Francisca embraces a grand forbidden passion with her priest. The two women's stories unfold alternately in rich, vivid prose steeped in Francisca's magic realism and the morbid superstition that ruled Spain.The Inquisition is everywhere. With cart horses' hooves muffled to deaden the noise of the Inquisitor's night arrival, neighbors disappear. Only their empty shoes left by the door reveal their fate. Anything - a sick child, a dead calf - or nothing at all, may attract the attention of the Inquisitor. Witches abound and in the palace a whole wing is given over to strange creatures who may foretell the future with their bleeding feet or divine secrets with a touch of their hands.These are turbulent, fearful times when the freakish is either fashionable or cursed and good for

This 1996 novel by Kathryn Harrison is a work of pure artistry. The reader is plunged into 17th century Spain and hurled into the contrasting lives of Francisca, the daughter of a poor Spanish silk grower, and Marie Louise de Bourbon, the young and tragic Queen of Spain.The words are pure poetry and filled with fascinating historical details: silk worms and exotic poisons, court life and the dungeons of the Inquisition, wet-nurses and dwarfs, religion and politics. It's all there.The world she describes made me squirm. Pulled me into the story, and kept me turning the pages.Against this background, and with exquisite detail, the reader is thrust into the lives of these two women. Our hearts race with forbidden passion and we shudder with fear of the Inquisition carts. We visit the royal bedchamber as well as the torturer's rack.There's love in this book, and lots of sadness. There are lessons to learn and metaphors for life. People to care about. Sin, deception, betrayal. And, when the book is over, there is the feeling of having lived for a short while through the terror and turmoil that defined 17th century Spain.This book is not for the squeamish. Or for those who are looking for a light pleasant read. But for those who are willing to experience the harshness of the world it describes, this is a really fine book.

The language Kathryn Harrison uses to tell this story is exquisite. Reading this novel was like running your fingers over a fine brocade; the novel has a rich texture and an intriguing plot. I love the way Harrison approaches the questions of religion and heresy, making these themes of the novel particularly important by placing her narrative in the time frame of the Spanish Inquisition. I have to take issue with those who dismiss this novel as a glorified romance novel. There's a lot more to Francisca and Alvaro's relationship than sex, and the juxtaposition of the situations of the two women highlights this difference.This was the first Kathryn Harrison novel I ever read, and it made Harrison one of my favorite writers, deservedly so. This novel will remain one of my top ten all-time favorite books, mainly because of Harrison's gorgeous prose.

Kathryn Harrison has done a beautiful job in capturing the essence of the spirit of the times in the lyrically beautiful prose of Poison. She is a word weaver, a poet as much as a novelist, and indeed, Poison reads much like a gorgeous poem I never wanted to end. The way Harrison weaves the two stories together is nothing short of magic. Poison is, indeed, a novel that will capture both the imagination and the heart.

Poison is written in lyrically beautiful prose that weaves a hypnotic spell around the plot. Kathryn Harrison is a master with words and recreates seventeenth century France and Spain in a marvelous fashion. The interweaving of the two plots and the parallels in the lives of the French and Spanish women are done with a storyteller's ultimate skill. Poison is rich with themes of lust and spirituality, redemption and betrayal, sin and forgiveness. This is a beautiful, but darkly haunting novel that won't be forgotten.