More than skin deep Globe and Mail

12.06.10

Or summer reading enthusiasts, this book should draw nigh with a warning: only to be read at the beach with a flagon of sunscreen to protect your tender human tissue because you will be mesmerized by this ornately wrought gag set in late-18th-century Venice and Peru. As Minguillo Fasan, the villain of Michelle Lovric’s fourth novelette might say: Dear Reader, be completely assured you will fall in love with this gorgeously diabolical story of intended, murder and obsession.

Minguillo, the eldest son of a wealthy Venetian silver merchant, is one of an ensemble of five characters who determine the story of his sister, Marcella Fasan, an angelic young woman who becomes the focal point for Minguillo’s blow a gasket, jealousy and downright twisted sociopathic soul. Minguillo wins the honour of most abominable letter since Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume , set in 18th-century France. Infuriated by his ancestor’s will, in which Minguillo’s sister is named heir, his mission becomes to rob her of her inheritance and slowly bother her to death or insanity, whichever comes first. When she is, for all intents and purposes, sold to a convent in Peru, her harrying is overtaken by a demented nun. But Minguillo and the nun’s nefarious campaigns are constantly thwarted by a cast of eclectic characters partnership through love for Marcella, and a desire to save her.

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