Poison (Paperback)

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 fortune may be a sign of sorcery. Horrible tortures exalt God and purify the souls of witches. Self-mortification is glorified.

Harrison's earthy, luminous and intimate prose brings these turbulent dark days into the mind of the reader where it lingers long after the passions of Francisca have been stilled and the husk of the queen has been shattered to release her trapped soul.

So if you like beautiful prose and being depressed and grossed out I would suggest this book to you wholeheartedly. On the other hand, if you're looking for any kind of plot, action or meaning look elsewhere.