Changes

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
no edit summary
When we first visit the Chiesa di Santa Maria we're in the company of Molly Cavendish who is a part-time guide at the Museo di Santa Maria, which is what the ruins of the Chiesa - a chapel - have now become. Crowds flock to see its centrepiece, a renaissance fresco with a history which grabs the attention of young and old. Molly uses the history to entertain the tourists, but there's more too it than she knows, particularly as the history of the building is also the history of the Vannini family, who helped in building the chapel some six hundred years ago and one of whose descendants is the director of the museum.
I was a little bit nervous about reading ''The Indomitable Chiesa di Santa Maria'': a ''novel'' about a ''building''. ? How was that going to work? But, the Chiesa di Santa Maria is on the banks of the Arno in Florence and Florence has always been one of my favourite cities, so, in need of some Tuscan sunshine, I gave it a go. I'm glad I did, because it's a cracker of a story, but I have some gripes and I'll get them out of the way first.
The book needs both copy editing and proofreading, the first to remove such problems as Molly Cavendish passing exams in the 21st century when they were phased out in the nineteen eighties, or having a father who has been the local priest for decades, is a devout Catholic and married. There's also some ugly sentence structure, particularly in the early part of the book and I lost count of the omitted and misused words and grammatical errors. It was ''frustrating'' to have to reread sentences, or even paragraphs, to work out what was meant. It was ''annoying'' to have a really good story spoiled by something which could so easily have been put right.

Navigation menu