“Goddess” is a historical novel based on the real-life figure Julie d’Aubigny a breeches-wearin’, swash bucklin’, bi-swingin’ opera singer who lived in 16th century France. The book is told in alternating chapters from La Maupin’s deathbed. Dying of consumption, she recounts how she basically did whatever the hell she wanted in her short but exciting life.

The book is a little on the long side and the writing a bit mediocre. But Gardiner portrays La Maupin in such an utterly charming, woman-roaring way that I had loads of fun reading this book and imagining all of Julie’s exploits and heartbreaks. ( )

A fascinating character and a tale told in an interesting fashion, a mix of third person narration and first person death bed confession. The author did a good job of showing the multiple facets of Julie D'Abiny's life. Well written and well paced, this was a good read. ( )

A fascinating woman - http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2019/02/goddess/ ( )

Review to comeI first heard about Julie d'Aubigny on Tumblr and when I came across this book I really wanted to read it. Since there are gaps in what we know about her the author framed the story as a series of flashbacks on her deathbed as she is supposedly giving confession. This does cover the year gaps in her life story very easily. Julie lived a very unconventional life, at a young age she became the mistress to the French King’s Horse Master and he had her married off to cover the fact she was having an affair on him. She knew how to use a sword since her father allowed her to learn and she used that skill all of her life. She was an opera singer in Paris and was loved by the crowds. The afterward does say that several characters were not real in order to mover the story along and some were composites but in the end there wasn’t a lot of material to work with and that makes the flashback narration tool the best to convey the story.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss.
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Three and a half, and I've teetered back and forth on scaling it up or down. I enjoyed reading this, and found the character crafted for La Maupin to be layered and complex and compelling - she's arrogant and fragile, wild and nervous, vain and completely tortured. She's defined by how society is opposed to her, and by how she refuses to step down from who she is because of that. Which is a strong and beautiful and powerful message, and a struggle that I enjoy seeing played out in fiction, all the better to represent, support and educate about those who have to fight it every day for real.

But I remain uncertain about some of the style choices made in the telling. Chapters of pared-back narrative are interspersed with the first-person meandering recollections of La Maupin near death, confessing to a priest. I found these sections a little too introspective, a little too wofflingly erudite and full of musings on the real point of things, which (for me) broke up the rhythm and immersion of the narrative, turning that interspersed narrative into discrete anecdotes rather than a flowing, driving, swallowing plunge of story. I would have preferred more feeling and living of La Maupin's life, rather than the endless pulling-back-to-reflect. (I also would have loved to just be more immersed in the world. I wanted to know so much more about the opera French and Italian, about society, about the world we moved through.)

I'll also note that this was labelled by my library as YA - possibly because the author's previous books have been YA. I am not sure it really is. While it does have important explorations of coming of age and defining your own identity despite what society tells you of reality, it also pushes beyond that into rather sex-and-death, hollowness-of-being adult territory. To be honest, perhaps a better YA version of the "girls taking the power society would deny them", complete with opera and queerness and swordplay, is [b:The Privilege of the Sword|821583|The Privilege of the Sword (Riverside, #2)|Ellen Kushner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389595637s/821583.jpg|4003]. ( )