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The Venetian's Wife is another beautifully designed pictorial romance by Nick Bantock, the author of the wildly successful
Griffin and Sabine books. All of Bantock's familiar tricks are in play here: he tells a fantastical story through a series of letters (and, in this case, e-mails), embellishing it with gorgeous collages, found photographs, and whimsical illustrations. This time, his heroine is Sarah Wolfe, a repressed young art restorer. Sarah receives an out-of-the-blue e-mail from one Niccolo Conti, a mysterious collector of Indian antiquities and ostensible heir of an illustrious Renaissance explorer. Conti is charming and fabulously wealthy, and he manages to persuade Sarah to leave her unfulfilling museum job to become his personal researcher, tracking down the lost pieces of his family's unparalleled collection of Indian sculpture. As Sarah sets to work, she finds herself involved in a story far stranger than anything she could have anticipated.
Bantock is at best a mediocre writer, but the text of a book like The Venetian's Wife is almost peripheral, a narrative strand that makes the lavish (and often stunning) illustrations more than just a collection of pretty pictures. The Venetian's Wife seems somewhat spare in comparison with Griffin and Sabine (there are no clever pasted-in envelopes here, and sometimes an unilluminated page or two will pass by), but Bantock's fans will likely find it delightful. --Jack Illingworth
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
