The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Hoffman is a novel about two teenagers in medieval Italy. One is Chiara, whose brother sells her to a nunnery because he can’t afford to keep her, and the other is Silvano, who is taking refuge is the neighbouring friary. Silvano is accused of murdering a man in a nearby town. The two are unlikely apprentices but soon find solitude in their new lifestyles. The fact that they get to enjoy each other as eye candy every once and a while doesn’t hurt.
Mary Hoffman is one of my favourite writers. She has another series for teens called Stravaganza, which is also set in Italy but during the Renaissance. It’s a trilogy and involves time travel.
I love Hoffman’s books because although the reading level is aimed at teens, the story is better written than many adult novels I read. My perception is that teen writers have to work extra hard to succeed. Their books are a hard sell–imagine trying to grab the attention of a teenager, to find a subject that will be new but not totally foreign, that involves sex but sex that won’t get banned by parent groups and librarians.
The Falconer’s Knot is a mystery. Silvano is taking refuge in the friary while his father tries to find the true murderer, but he is soon pegged as a suspect in a series of suspicious deaths in the friary. His only friend in the friary, the Colour Master, is also under suspicion. Over at the nunnery, Chiara is getting her hair chopped off and sporting the nun’s habit. She is also working with the nuns’ Colour Master.
The Colour Masters are creating pigments used for church frescos. This side story is really interesting because the information about religion and the painting of the frescos in Italy during the Middle Ages is interwoven in a non-intrusive way.
Overall this is a fun book. I’m not adept at figuring out mysteries so I couldn’t guess the ending, but in these types of literary mysteries that’s never really the point. This is just another damn-fine book from Mary Hoffman.