A Woman of Seville

Sallie Muirden

A Woman of Seville
Format
Paperback
Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
Country
Australia
Published
1 December 2009
Pages
284
ISBN
9780732290597

A Woman of Seville

Sallie Muirden

A novel of love, ladders, and the unexpected … Let this beautiful, sensual story carry you away …
Paula Sanchez is famous in Seville. Now she is sitting for the Penitent Magdalen, along with Father Rastro and the monk Victor Maria, and watched over by the young painter Diego Velazquez. But Seville in 1616 is a dangerous place, and the eyes of the Inquisition are everywhere. In the evenings, Paula escapes the cares of life by skipping from rooftop to rooftop with the mysterious ladder man, who visits the Sevillians’ balconies each evening at dusk. By day, she is encouraged by Father Rastro to be a mother to the Morisco boys, who are ?also seeking liberation. But does the painting hold a secret that can truly free Paula?Sallie Muirden’s powerful, poetic and moving novel is a testament to our capacity for wonder, for art and for love.Praise for Sallie Muirden’s WE tOO SHALL BE MOtHERS'Original, intelligent and playful’ Katherine England, tHE ADVERtISER ‘a tour de force in its elegant brevity’ Michael Sharkey, tHE WEEKEND AUStRALIAN

Review

Seville in the year 1616 is a place of betrayal and torture, with the spying eyes of the Inquisition everywhere. Moorish settlers are banished from Spain and their traumatised children are locked away in monasteries for religious conversion with even the most penitent locals conducting their true lives in secret. Paula Sanchez is a concubine famed for her beauty who does her best to avoid the attentions of her lecherous benefactor Bishop Rizi in order to sit as Mary for the ‘The Penitent Magdalen’. In the evenings she escapes the heat and uncertainty of her earthy existence and conflicting morality with the Ladder Man: a mute, almost-ethereal being who never sets foot upon the ground, preferring instead the rooftops of Seville. Young apprentice painter Diego Velasquez wanders freely about the city and watches over the progress of the painting and Paula’s involvement within it.

Muirden’s uniquely poetic writing reveals the strands of spirituality, longing and love emerging from behind the brush strokes and creates a hot, bustling city that emanates divine fantasy and escape.

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