Love and Lavender by Josi Kilpack

 Hazel Stillman has a keen mind and a club foot.  With no hopes of an advantageous marriage, she devotes herself to her chosen profession as a teacher at a girl's school.  Duncan Penhale has a brilliant mind, but his spectrum disorder makes social interaction difficult. Hazel and Duncan share an uncle (though there is no blood relationship since Duncan was an adopted nephew), the same Uncle Elliot who is determined to help all his nieces and nephews find true love.  He offers each of them the fondest wish if they are able to find and marry a suitable spouse. He didn't anticipate that they would confer and decide to marry each other just to get the inheritance. Fearing that they were missing the point, Uncle Elliot adds one more requirement, they have to live together a full year, acting as husband and wife, before they inherit. At first they share a house, but not much else, but as they come to enjoy each other's company, despite their peculiarities, their pretend relationship begins to feel much more real.

Here is another in the Mayfield Family Series.  I have enjoyed the books in this series because the main characters learn to overcome their own shortcomings and hangups to make their match work. I love the message that two people who are willing to be nice to each other can learn to love each other. Kilpack does a good job of making Duncan sympathetic, even though he is not neurotypical and showing how Hazel could fall in love with him.  She also shows how Duncan learns to recognize and show his love for Hazel.  It was a refreshing read after the heavy Irving Stone book. (2021, 320 p.)

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

 Michelangelo Buonarroti was born to an old but financially endangered family in Florence in 1475.  Stone's novel about his life is highly fictionalized, but interesting and insightful.  It recounts his life from his childhood in the hills above Florence, through his apprenticeship, and then his time in the household of Lorenzo de Medici.  Stone portrays his lean years trying to establish himself, and then the period when he was forced into projects he didn't want by a long list of corrupt popes and cardinals. Stone particularly focuses on the periods when Michelangelo was working on his most famous pieces, the David, the Sistine Chapel, the de Medici tomb and finally the dome of St Peter's. 

You may have been wondering why I haven't posted in a while.  It is because this recorded book is 34 hrs long! Someone recommended I read it before my trip to Italy next week, and I am glad I did.  I had read it before, years ago, maybe when I was in college*, but it was good to refresh my memory about the time period and all the social pressures that influenced Michelangelo's work. The reader of the audiobook does a good job (even at 125% speed) and the writing style is very readable, if a little sentimental.  I wonder how similar Michelangelo was to Stone's portrayal?  Stone quotes from Michelangelo's letters and poems, and refers to contracts and deeds, suggesting that these were the primary sources he used in writing the book, but that might have just been a literary device.  I was very impressed with Stone's ability to describe and interpret the motivations behind each of the principle art works.  Mostly, I am just excited to actually get to see some of these amazing works next week in person! (776 p. 1961)

*When I read the book those many years ago, I think I was too naive to pick up on a lot of the sexual imagery the justified the book's title. It is subtle, but everywhere :)