THE ORPHAN'S SONG

Kate’s adult fiction debut explores the intriguing world of Venetian orphanages that teach music to children.

Violetta and Mino are foundlings entrusted to the Ospedale degli Incurabili, originally a convent-run hospital for syphilitics. Violetta does not know who her parents are, but when she was 5, she witnessed Mino’s abandonment by his mother. Now teenagers who have met sporadically and secretly on the Ospedale’s roof, each must follow the destiny preordained by their social status in the arcane caste system of 1730s Venice. Violetta is training to join the Ospedale’s coro, the all-female ensemble that performs liturgical music to raise funds for the church. The prospects of less talented orphan girls are limited to arranged marriage, the convent, or menial servitude. As a boy, Mino is not allowed to study music, although he is gifted and has surreptitiously taught himself to play the violin. (He is also a self-taught luthier.) Male orphans like Mino are apprenticed when they age out. Kate (Unforgiven, 2015, etc.) does not stray far from the young adult staples of angst-y teens and conflicted love. Rejected by Violetta, Mino opts for Venetian street hustles in lieu of apprenticeship. Violetta is torn between the coro and the lure of professional singing, between Mino and a dashing older impresario who can make her a star. The contradictions posed by Venetian culture vis-à-vis the arts and morality are well-depicted: Coro musicians are revered, but their lives are constrained; professional musicians are viewed with contempt, and, with few exceptions, their performances are illegal. Strict moral codes ostensibly govern Venice, but the custom of wearing masks most of the year encourages all manner of anonymous vice and licentiousness, which then feeds the Ospedale system with more STD patients and abandoned, illegitimate progeny. Violetta and Mino, though, seem thinly motivated. Lacking clearly defined goals, each too often seems attracted by the latest shiny object.

A historical novel that connects some dots but not all.