review :: The Enchantress of Florence

The Enchantress of Florence

Salman Rushdie

This was a surprisingly slow read for me. I did not love this book, nor did I hate it. It was okay. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had started reading the book in a different setting and mindset. When I started The Enchantress of Florence, it was on a long plane ride home to San Diego, and I was tired. I read too much too fast. In the end, I had a difficult time keeping track of the characters, events, and time lines.

Rushdie has an interesting writing style--he writes to divert, but the reader cannot simply sit back, read, and be diverted. The reader must be present and fully engaged. Full of fantasy, myth, and magic, The Enchantress of Florence is a lovely story, and intricately woven.

The intersection of cultures of the East and West in the 16th century made for a great historical backdrop, and the book was full of historical characters: Niccolò Machiavelli, the great Medici dynasty, even Vlad Dracula made an appearance! However, I did not find myself drawn in to the settings like I hoped. 

Overall, I found the story imaginative and clever, intriguing enough for me to read more of Rushdie, although not as good as I anticipated.

word of the day :: buffoonery

buffoon:

[buh-foon]

–noun

1. a person who amuses others by tricks, jokes, odd gestures and postures, etc.
2. a person given to coarse or undignified joking.

  

Origin:

1540-50; earlier buffon < F < It buffone,  equiv. to buff- (expressive base; cf. buffa  puff of breath, buffare  to puff, puff up one's checks) + -one  agent suffix ≪ L -ō,  acc. -ōnem

 

-Related Forms 

buff·foon·er·y [buh-foo-nuh-ree], noun

 

"There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poems there lives a real transcendental buffoonery. "

:: Friedrich von Schlegel ::

* Definition from www.dictionary.com