I here is no age to embark on an adventure through the streets of the Venice of the Settecento, and with Harlequin Venice , of Odile Weulersse (Hachette Book Publishing, The Youth paperback, 1994, ISBN 2-01-019896.4), both the main characters in the novel that readers will not wait the number of years to be confronted with the lights and shadows of the Serenissima.
Tonina, daughter of Senator Zolio, is one of those heroines as found in many historical novels for young readers or adolescent is indeed, a girl of that time serves as a backdrop to the novel, but it is also also a girl a little anachronistic, animated by the spirit of our time.
Should we all shun such a novel? Not at all.
First, because it paints a portrait very much alive in Venice. Its streets and squares, canals, markets and palaces, its colorful people, its patricians who hold the power in their hands, fortunes are made (sometimes) and break (often) in Casini, smugglers who traffic their goods too regulated in their eyes, the Serene Cajigal very caring with the ladies, its prisons where arbitrary justice sends even the innocent languish, etc..
Secondly, because this young heroine allows teen readers feel that he is close easily. Tonina relations with his widowed father and his brother, with his knight, with mainly young Noble Mainland who would woo her, in short, his way of finding its place among the world of children and adult, and build its own independence, all issues that lend themselves to thinking of young readers.
And as identification with the characters is, it seems, a way to make reading attractive, I'm certainly not going to complain that a novel "Youth" opens its drives the gates of Venice Settecento.
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