Book Review | City of Silk by Glennis Virgo

City of Silk won the Debut Author Over 50 award in 2023. Frankly, I think it deserves to win any award it’s entered for. But I should mention that I knew the author when we were teenagers, and a mutual friend told me about it in time for me to get an ARC from the publishers via Netgalley. I have a lot of people to thank for this wonderful, engrossing read. It is published (at least in the UK) on 21st November.

City of Silk

by Glennis Virgo

Justice in sixteenth-century Bologna is like the fine silk which the city something only the rich and powerful can afford.

Elena Morandi is a supremely talented seamstress, at home among the bolts of fabric and cutting shears of her trade. However, she is determined that her ambition to be a tailor, a profession barred to her as a woman, will not slip through from her fingers like thread from the eye of a needle. With luck and perseverance, Elena gains a fragile foothold in the workshop of a master tailor, but then a man from her past crosses her path. Antonio della Fontana has every corner of the city in his pocket and, as Elena knows all too well, abused his position of power at the Baraccano orphanage. Driven to fight for justice against a man seemingly above the law, Elena hatches a plan to get retribution for herself, a lost friend and those still prey to Fontana’s abuses. (Goodreads)

My Review

At first glance, City of Silk has much in common with The Instrumentalist, published in the summer. A talented girl, brought up in the harsh environment of an Italian orphanage, suffers sexual abuse before escaping and finding a way to fulfill her calling.

Apart from the excellence of both, they are completely different.

In City of Silk, Ms Virgo introduces us to the city of Bologna in 1575 through the eyes of Elena, who is desperately trying not to be married off to a rich and powerful abuser. All she wants is to be a tailor like her father, and she knows her sewing is up to it. Luckily she falls in with a widow, a seamstress for women’s clothing. But no, Elena wants to tailor. Women in tailoring is not only unheard of, the Guild prevent it.

We learn more about this wonderful character in flashbacks, before the story settles to one of subterfuge, danger and suspense.

The characters are beautifully drawn, some based on real artists, others on portraits of artisans in London’s National Portrait Gallery. The research feels as sound as one can make it. I felt I’d been to Bologna and walked its streets. The phrasing is so beautiful it sometimes made me pause, but that helped to pace me through what is a slick and roller-coaster narrative. This book deserves taking your time over.

I’m finding it difficult to say how much I loved this book, which, btw, is not suitable for under 14s. The sights, the sounds, the reality of trade in a medieval city, and the utter invisibility of women… It’s a truly wonderful piece of literature.