Book of the Month - The Book of Unholy Mischief

I am forever on the lookout for books like The Historian, Shadow of the Wind, and People of the Book. I love the mix of European history, books, and unfurling revelations. Finding read-alikes is a wonderful, though not straightforward thing. How do you recapture, let alone articulate, how a book made you feel? When I picked up The Book of Unholy Mischief, I got what I was looking for. It had all the right ingredients.

A historical novel set in Venice in the late fifteenth-century, this tale is about loyalty, corruption, growing up, food, secrets, and of course, power. The narrator is Luciano, a former street orphan who was taken in by a chef in a grand house. His voice is that of an experienced man looking back, and we follow him as he recounts how he sought love, forged his identity, and tried to unravel the mystery surrounding his master and an ancient book, about which all of Venice is abuzz. Throughout the novel we both recognize and applaud his cleverness and determination, but feel the strain as he makes (not always the right) choices. The book is imbued with the quest for immortality on many levels as well, not just of people but of secrets and knowledge, and their transmission from teacher to pupil through the ages.