I read a lot of historical fiction as a teenager: Jean Plaidy, Anya Seton et al and have read little since. But this is one I would go back to again and again.
Simonetta di Saronno has lost her husband at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and subsequently falls in love with the young artist who paints her likeness for a fresco in the local church. Her fortune gone, she concocts a liqueur from the juice of almonds in memory of her new love…
Only then, when she let the remembrance of him help her, when she combined the bitter and the sweet, the very essence of their entire encounter, did she know she was done. She drank deeply of the finished draught, while she wrote rapidly with her quill the exact proportions and ingredients she had used. Her head nodded over her ink black fingers and as her brow touched the creamy pages of the ledger she thought of sharing a cup with him, laughing, somewhere where the sun warmed their skin as they drank in a way she knew could never be.
An intriguing, surprising yet satisfying read as characters’ lives criss-cross and take their own paths to an unimagined future.
This Christmas I will hunt down a bottle of Amaretto di Saronne, known as Disaronno Originale, and, one day, treat myself to a bottle of the limited edition perfume made by Floris in celebration of this stunning novel.
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