A Rare and Curious Gift

"Holdstock's vivid, unflinching tale doesn't sugarcoat the casual brutality of the period, and is punctuated by startling moments of beauty."—Publishers Weekly

"Holdstock summons a world of immense beauty and complexity, taking us back into the heart of the Italian Renaissance with a rare sense of ease and confidence. This novel goes places where novelists rarely go, into the deep and anxious center of the artistic mind. Darkly beautiful, it puts roots down into the reader's unconscious, and feeds and sustains these roots with details, in a richly sensuous language."— Jay Parini

LOOSELY BASED on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, A Rare and Curious Gift tells the story of Sofonisba, a brilliant painter gradually taking over her father's studio. Determined to avoid the depredations of men, she is fighting her own intensely erotic attraction to Matteo Tassi—sculptor, goldsmith, a notorious and irresistible rogue. Then a young slave, her skin strangely mottled by nature, enters their lives and those of their friends, inevitably altering their relationship with each other and the world around them forever.

Published in Canada as Beyond Measure (Cormorant Books Inc.)

• Paperback: 368 pages

• Publisher: W. W. Norton; Reprint edition (February 20, 2006)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 0393327477

• ISBN-13: 978-0393327472