Maddalena and the Dark is a dark fantasy or a dark academia-type story set in eighteen-century Venice, mostly at the Ospedale della Pietà, a cloistered school for foundling girls. Most are abandoned at the doorstep and have no known family. As they are raised, if they have talent, they are taught music. The others become the cooks, housecleaners, etc. that support this prestigious music school. The musicians perform at masses and are occasionally hired out to perform privately in the fancy palazzi and villas of Venice. The two protagonists are fifteen-year-old Luisa, who only wants to be the best at violin, and Maddalena, who is sent to the Pietà by her wealthy family in hopes of salvaging their honor. Her mother ran off with a lover, so the legitimacy of Maddalena and her brother Beneto comes under the microscope of the Venetian aristocracy. When the two girls meet, Maddalena immediately feels the stirrings for a sapphic relationship with Luisa.
The novel is essentially is the tale of these two girls and the lengths to which they will go to achieve their desires. Maddalena is the dominant one in the relationship and leads them both into situations beyond their control with “the dark,” a supernatural force that is quite poorly defined.
The story is told in alternating points of view, but there is often a bit of overlap with the same scene being viewed from both girls’ points of view—which tends to become repetitious. The plot is rather loose. The novel itself character-driven by these teenage girls. The sapphic aspect is so oblique as to be nearly indecipherable, described in prose that is often over-written and descending into the purple. As a frequent visitor to Venice for extended periods of time, I didn’t find myself believing I was in that eighteen-century city.
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Maddalena and the Dark (Flatiron Books, June 13, 2023) is available through:
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