The Book of Madness and Cures: A Novel

by Regina O'Melveny

Overview

Dr. Gabriella Mondini, a strong-willed, young Venetian woman, has followed her father in the path of medicine. She possesses a singleminded passion for the art of physick, even though, in 1590, the male-dominated establishment is reluctant to accept a woman doctor. So when her father disappears on a mysterious journey, Gabriella's own status in the Venetian medical society is threatened. Her father has left clues — beautiful, thoughtful, sometimes torrid, and often enigmatic letters from his travels as he researches his vast encyclopedia, The Book of Diseases.

After ten years of missing his kindness, insight, and guidance, Gabriella decides to set off on a quest to find him — a daunting journey that will take her through great university cities, centers of medicine, and remote villages across Europe. Despite setbacks, wary strangers, and the menaces of the road, the young doctor bravely follows the clues to her lost father, all while taking notes on maladies and treating the ill to supplement her own work.

Gorgeous and brilliantly written, and filled with details about science, medicine, food, and madness, The Book of Madness and Cures is an unforgettable debut.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316195812
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	06/18/2013
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.78(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Regina O'Melveny's poetry has been published widely in literary journals, garnering several prizes. She grew up at the edge of pungent chaparral in La Mesa, California, and chose to enroll at Callison College — a school of International Studies at the University of the Pacific — almost solely based upon the fact that the second year would be spent in India. Thus began her many extended travels that would later inspire The Book of Madness and Cures, her first novel. She lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Editorial Reviews

"Regina O'Melveny's debut novel, The Book of Madness and Cures, is a marvelous, inventive story of a singular courageous woman on a quest to find her missing father. Set in the Renaissance, it explores the wonders, and dangers, of Europe and Asia Minor and recreates a world—exotic and familiar, sensuous and beguiling—where a defiant woman, practicing the ancient healing arts, is believed to be contrary to the laws of God and Man."—Kathleen Kent, author of The Traitor's Wife and The Heretic's Daughter

"....[A]n elegant portrait of a resolute woman who practices medicine in 16th-century Venice...The writing is superb, particularly when the author describes..exotic locales and ancient superstitions. The book will especially attract readers who enjoy female centered historical novels whose plots are not driven by romance."—Lucy Roehrig, Library Journal

"[Gabriella Mondini's] journey is conveyed with earthy and sensual brio [and] clearly well-researched evocations of time and place, and...poetical description....You will love this adventure."—Elle Magazine

"Poet O'Melveny's debut fiction is like a lyrical composite creature-part father/daughter epistolary novel, part aristocratic diary, part adventurer's travelogue, and part compendium of allegorical diseases...Readers will be delighted by O'Melveny's whimsical embellishments."—Publisher's Weekly

"[A] picaresque fiction debut...a provocative window into early medical pronouncements on everything from depression to claustrophobia..."—Jan Stuart, The Boston Globe

"O'Melveny's writing is smooth and evocative. Gabriella proves a likeable traveling companion, and her first-person narration keeps things moving along....Readers will find much to enjoy in this colorful, picaresque tale."—David Maine, Popmatters

"Gorgeously written, and filled with details about science and medicine, this is an unforgettable debut novel."—Tara Quinn, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Infused with the sensuous places and metaphorical natural world that recur in [O'Melveny's] poetry..."—Anne Gray Fischer, Ploughshares

"Intriguing.... Every new chapter brings a new adventure and a new piece of the puzzle."—Claire Rivero, The Washington Independent Review of Books

"Reminiscent of The Red Tent, Anita Diamant's book-club favorite..."—Susannah Meadows, The New York Times

"[A] darkly whimsical first novel..."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

"Reminiscent of The Red Tent, Anita Diamant's book-club favorite..."

Susannah Meadows

"Intriguing.... Every new chapter brings a new adventure and a new piece of the puzzle."

Claire Rivero

"Infused with the sensuous places and metaphorical natural world that recur in [O'Melveny's] poetry..."

Anne Gray Fischer

"Gorgeously written, and filled with details about science and medicine, this is an unforgettable debut novel."

Tara Quinn

"O'Melveny's writing is smooth and evocative. Gabriella proves a likeable traveling companion, and her first-person narration keeps things moving along....Readers will find much to enjoy in this colorful, picaresque tale."

David Maine

"[A] picaresque fiction debut...a provocative window into early medical pronouncements on everything from depression to claustrophobia..."

Jan Stuart

"[Gabriella Mondini's] journey is conveyed with earthy and sensual brio [and] clearly well-researched evocations of time and place, and...poetical description....You will love this adventure."

Elle Magazine

"....[A]n elegant portrait of a resolute woman who practices medicine in 16th-century Venice...The writing is superb, particularly when the author describes..exotic locales and ancient superstitions. The book will especially attract readers who enjoy female­ centered historical novels whose plots are not driven by romance."

Lucy Roehrig

"Regina O'Melveny's debut novel, The Book of Madness and Cures, is a marvelous, inventive story of a singular courageous woman on a quest to find her missing father. Set in the Renaissance, it explores the wonders, and dangers, of Europe and Asia Minor and recreates a world--exotic and familiar, sensuous and beguiling--where a defiant woman, practicing the ancient healing arts, is believed to be contrary to the laws of God and Man."

Kathleen Kent

Like real-life Early Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, affectingly portrayed in Susan Vreeland's The Passion of Artemisia, and Ariana Franklin's Adelia Aguilar (e.g., Mistress of the Art of Death), Gabriella Mondini is a woman ahead of her time. She's the lone female practicing medicine (with her father's sponsorship) in 16th-century Venice. Then her father vanishes, and she spends years traveling from Italy to Scotland to Morocco and more to find him, teased along by the occasional letter he's sent. In her fiction debut, poet O'Melveny draws on her Italian artist mother's memories of Venice and her own father's disappearance when she was young to create a story of real longing. A big push, with specially slipcased galleys featuring the beautiful cover. I'm betting on this one.

Library Journal

In sixteenth-century Venice, Gabriella Mondini’s beloved but unstable father, a doctor, has gone traveling and disappeared. In spite of piteous complaints from her self-centered mother, Gabriella, who is her father’s confidante and colleague in medicine, sets off across Europe and North Africa to find him. Traveling as a woman in those times was not for sissies, and O’Melveny has done her homework thoroughly, bringing to life the sights and smells, pleasures and terrors that accompany Gabriella on her quest. Her single-mindedness borders on the obsessive, not as attractive a trait as filial devotion, but O’Melveny’s writing is persuasive, and Katherine Kellgren’s very beautiful and artful narration, which weaves a tapestry of voices, male and female, in all the accents of the continent, makes this a book of marvels. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MAY 2012 - AudioFile

In sixteenth-century Venice, Gabriella Mondini’s beloved but unstable father, a doctor, has gone traveling and disappeared. In spite of piteous complaints from her self-centered mother, Gabriella, who is her father’s confidante and colleague in medicine, sets off across Europe and North Africa to find him. Traveling as a woman in those times was not for sissies, and O’Melveny has done her homework thoroughly, bringing to life the sights and smells, pleasures and terrors that accompany Gabriella on her quest. Her single-mindedness borders on the obsessive, not as attractive a trait as filial devotion, but O’Melveny’s writing is persuasive, and Katherine Kellgren’s very beautiful and artful narration, which weaves a tapestry of voices, male and female, in all the accents of the continent, makes this a book of marvels. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MAY 2012 - AudioFile