Reviews

Poison by Kathryn Harrison

badam868's review against another edition

2.0

Very disjointed plot. I'm still not sure what the connection between the women was supposed to be.

canadianbookworm's review

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2023/07/poison.html

sday157's review against another edition

5.0

OMG! I have been racking my brain for days trying to remember the title of this book! I finally put the correct words in a search engine and poof! Here she is!! It’s been many years since I’ve read this book, but I remember it being really good! Going to reread soon!

ohmygodlinda's review against another edition

3.0

My favorite of Kathyrn Harrison's novels, that darts between two women in vastly different social spheres and suffer this sort of debilitating and bleak lack of choice that I only really truly understood toward the very end. I found this paralyzingly creepy, but maybe that was only me. And maybe it's just Kathryn Harrison -- whose work I usually find paralyzingly creepy on some degree.

5elementknitr's review against another edition

5.0

One of those amazing books that makes me buy everything else I can find from the author.
It's a parallel story. I kept waiting for the two main characters to meet, but they never do. Both women are trapped by their circumstances. It's an amazing story.

mslaura's review against another edition

4.0

This book relates the stories of two young women during the time of the Spanish inquisition: Francisca, a silk-grower's daughter involved in an illicit affair with a priest, and Marie Louise de Bourbon, a queen stuck in an unhappy marriage based on political motives. Their lives are loosely intertwined but for the most part they represent parallel stories. Francisca narrates the story throughout, so that it alternates between first- and third-person. However, there is an omniscience to her accounts of the queen's life so that we are privy to all aspects of her story. I thought this book was just beautifully written and effectively conveyed the tragedy and hopelessness of these women's circumstances. I found the descriptions of the affair gratuitously vulgar, which detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the book, but overall I loved it.

auntie_em's review against another edition

3.0

I enjoy historical fiction because I usually learn a few things while being entertained with a good story. Poison tells the parallel stories of Francisca and Queen Maria Louisa, two beloved young girls whose lives change after they lose their mothers: one when her mother becomes the wet nurse to the future king of Spain, the other when she leaves France to marry this king. I learned a bit about silkworms and the silk industry, the Spanish Inquisition, King Carlos of Spain, 17th century clothing and hair styles, and what exactly is Spanish Fly. This is an interesting read, well-researched and well-written, with a most satisfying ending -- especially if you appreciate it when the universe seems to right itself and justice is served.

doriastories's review against another edition

3.0

While the writing is flowing and rhapsodic, the content is confused and choppy, jumping back and forth and time and between characters, as well as between the first and third person. While clearly intended to be witty and clever, after a while it is simply baffling. Even worse, it devolves into sheer tedium, as the reader slogs through page after page of elegant and poetical turns of phrase, waiting with a sordid mix of unease and impatience for the many long-hinted-at horrors to befall the doomed main characters.

It doesn't help that the author (as she brazenly points out in her afterword) deliberately chose to monkey with many crucial facts surrounding the lives and deaths of several of her characters - in particular the dramatic and completely unhistorical demise of the Queen Mother, as a sort of poetic justice for supposedly murdering her daughter-in-law!? Historical fiction is, as a matter of course, an exercise in fantasy coupled with large grains of truth. But "Poison" was just too hard to swallow.

n_raphael03's review

hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

readingwithsammi's review against another edition

1.0

I had high expectations for this but it is terribly slow and the storyline does not flow well at all. I was very disappointed and I wanted to give up halfway through because I was so bored.