Christine de Pizan is one of the few medieval women we know from their own words who wasn’t either a member of a religious order or a member of a royal family. Her works reflect a philosophical mind that wanted to improve the world around her. Illuminated copies of her books are absolutely beautiful; they are treasures from an otherwise appalling century. The beauty of de Pizan’s poetry and the books made to show off that poetry are a central part of Kathleen B. Jones’s novel, Cities of Women. Unfortunately, the inspiration of Christine de Pizan and the Book of the Queen are not enough to elevate an otherwise dull story of two women who have to deal with mundanities in order to have beauty in their lives.
Cities of Women is told in turns by two women, separated by nearly a millennium. Beatrice is a contemporary of Christine de Pizan, although she only meets the celebrated author later in life. Verity is a historian on the verge of stalling out of the tenure track sometime around our present. Beatrice and Verity are very different characters, only really sharing a desire to do justice to the stories of others. Beatrice is an artist in her own right; she uses her talents to illuminate manuscripts before they’re bound and finished. Verity wants to tell the stories of the women she studies (first women of the Paris Commune, then the woman? who might have illuminated the Book of the Queen) but is told to strip her writing of anything that’s not academic and utterly grounded in documented history.
Beatrice’s chapters race through her life. We meet Beatrice as a young girl, just before the Black Death kills her father and younger sisters. Later chapters jump ahead by years as Beatrice becomes the primary earner in her small household before she figures out a way to find enough money to bring herself and her mother to Paris where, she hopes, she can set up shop illuminating manuscripts. Verity’s chapters don’t jump through time the same way. After getting a discouraging message from her department at a California college, Verity goes into a bit of a tailspin before taking a friend’s invitation to go to New York and take some time to think about her next steps. A chance visit to the Morgan Library sends Verity further off her trajectory, to London where she can study illuminated manuscripts in person. Her new quest is to prove that the Book of the Queen was illuminated by a woman—not impossible but there is literally no evidence to prove who the artist was one way or the other.
I struggled with this book, mostly because I was annoyed by Verity and the way that Beatrice’s chapters kept jumping ahead. I found Beatrice to be much more interesting than Verity, in part because Beatrice is much more pragmatic and grounded than Verity. Beatrice not only doesn’t waver in her goals, she also knows how to make and execute a plan. She also doesn’t suffer fools or fall for flatterers. Verity, on the other hand, comes across as much younger than she must be. (She must be in her late 20s or early 30s to have a Ph.D. and be on the first rung of the tenure track.) She lets herself be led by someone who she should definitely have some qualms about while, at the same time, flailing whenever she attempts to explain her newfound fascination with Christine de Pizan and the Book of the Queen. The juxtaposition of the two characters was jarring.
Readers, I’d recommend leaving this one on the shelf.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.