The Brightest Star, Emma Harcourt
The Brightest Star, Emma Harcourt
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The Brightest Star

Author: Emma Harcourt

Narrator: Lucy Bell

Unabridged: 10 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 07/06/2022


Synopsis

A thirst for learning and a passion for astronomy draw an extraordinary young woman deep into the intellectual maelstrom, political complexities and religious extremism of Renaissance Florence. This beautifully crafted novel will appeal to readers of Karen Brooks' The Good Wife of Bath and Pip Williams' Dictionary of Lost Words.
1496 It is the height of the Renaissance and its flowering of intellectual and artistic endeavour, but the city state of Florence is in the grip of fundamentalist preacher Friar Girolamo Savonarola. Its good people believe the Lord speaks through him, just as certainly as the Sun circles the Earth.For Leonarda Lunetta, eldest daughter of the learned Signore Vincenzio Fusili, religion is not as interesting as the books she shares with her beloved father. Reading is an escape from the ridicule flung her way, for Luna is not like other girls. She was born with a misshapen leg and that, and her passion for intellectual pursuits alters how society sees her and how she sees the world.Luna wants to know, to learn, to become an astronomer who charts the night sky - certainly not the dutiful, marriageable daughter all of Florence society insists upon. So when Luna meets astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, she is not surprised that his heretical beliefs confirm her view that the world is not as it is presented - or how it could be. These dangerous ideas bring her into conflict with the preacher Savonarola, and her future is changed irrevocably as politics, extremism and belief systems ignite in a dangerous conflagration.Luna is a woman born out of time, the brightest star of her generation, but can she reconcile the girl of her father's making with this new version of herself? And if she does, will Renaissance Italy prove too perilous and dark a place for a free-thinking woman?

About Emma Harcourt

Emma Harcourt is an author, researcher and journalist. She began writing historical fiction while completing the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course and now spends all her available hours either researching history or writing about it. As a young adult she travelled to Florence to learn Italian and fell in love with the place. From there she moved to London where she lived for ten years before eventually returning to Australia to raise her son. She's now based in Sydney with her teenage daughters. When she's not writing or researching history, you'll find her reading in her garden. Emma is the author of critically lauded, internationally published bestseller The Shanghai Wife. Her second book, The Brightest Star, is set in Renaissance Florence.Photo: Noel Mclaughlin


Reviews

Goodreads review by Janelle on June 26, 2022

An enjoyable historical fiction set in Florence in 1496, the Medici family is in exile and an extremist preacher Savonarola has great influence over the lives of the people. The main character is Luna, the eldest daughter of the Fusilli family, who have a wool business. Luna was born with a deformed......more

Goodreads review by Veronica ⭐️ on September 11, 2022

[URL not allowed] I was expecting this story to be about Luna's battle to be accepted as a woman of knowledge, and this was partly the story, but it was more about the politics of Venice in the 15th Century and the suppression of women. Set in Renaissance Florence, a time when t......more

Goodreads review by Theresa on July 05, 2022

Florence is one of my favourite settings for a novel and the Renaissance is one of my favourite eras, so it should come as no surprise that I was drawn to this latest release by Emma Harcourt, The Brightest Star. The events unfold during the dark period upon which Florence was within the grips of th......more

Goodreads review by Amanda - on December 29, 2022

*[URL not allowed] ‘It was the wet nurse who sealed Luna’s fate. So powerless a figure yet her small act of defiance changed the path of the Fusili family history forever. None could have foreseen the turn of events she would initiate by letting the baby cry. Such an innocent soun......more

Goodreads review by Tracey Allen on August 14, 2022

Set in Florence, The Brightest Star by Emma Harcourt starts in 1479 with the birth of Leonarda Lunetta (Luna) Fusili. Luna is born with a misshapen leg and is immediately rejected by her mother. The eldest daughter of Signore Vincenzio Fusili, Luna is brought up with reading, debate, science and ast......more