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Courtesan: A Novel, by Dora Levy Mossanen
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Set amid the elegant ch�teaux of Belle �poque France and the closely guarded world of nineteenth-century Persian women, Courtesan unfolds with the breathtaking cinematic sweep and stunning visual grandeur of an epic film. At its heart are three unforgettable women: Madame Gabrielle, the courtesan whose fateful liaison with the shah of Persia reverberates in the lives of her daughter, Fran�oise, and her rebellious and brave granddaughter, Simone, whose journey plunges her into the cutthroat diamond trade, where the secrets of an ancient culture may hold the truth she desperately seeks.
- Sales Rank: #1632171 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-11-19
- Released on: 2009-11-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
A sweeping romance with intrigues in both fin de si�cle Paris and repressive Persia, Mossanen's engrossing second novel (after Harem) follows the sentimental education of a young seductress. Though Simone knows from a young age that she's too romantic to follow her courtesan mother, Fran�oise, into the family business, her grandmother, famed Parisian madam Gabrielle (n�e Ester Abramowicz), isn't so convinced. A really handsome man, she figures, can seduce Simone, and thus initiate her into the habits of wealthy courtesans. Gabrielle sets upon Cyrus, a handsome Persian jeweler, and Simone is intrigued by the man who supplies only the rarest diamonds to the shah's court ("Was the origin of red diamonds the blood of mistreated diggers, the blazing eyes of dragons guarding illicit mines, or the tears of children forced into hard labor?" she wonders). She succumbs to his charms—but then they fall in love. Simone moves with her new husband to the rugged mountains of Persia to make a quiet life living as Jews in a Muslim country, but her happiness is short-lived. Abrupt shifts between times and locations confuse, but the engaging plot wins out. And while the sex scenes are a bit overcooked (Simone "directed the creamy gaze of her breasts" at a suitor), readers will find themselves gripped by spirited Simone's many adventures.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Raised by her mother and grandmother, two of France's most popular courtesans, Simone rejects the plush life of France for true love. When she is introduced to the Persian shah's Jewish jeweler, Simone falls in love and joins her new husband in Persia. She becomes wrapped up not only in the exotic world of Persian Jews (Simone is Jewish) but also in court intrigue and the dangerous world of diamonds. Eventually, Simone is also forced to employ some of the lessons learned at her mother's bedside. Like Mossanen's debut novel, Harem (2002), this lush and erotic story covers the lives of three generations of forward-thinking and daring women. Mossanen commits the cardinal sin of historical fiction writing: creating unlikely friendships between her characters and historical persons. In this case, Simone's courtesan grandmother is a close friend of Emile Zola (whose first and last names are both used each time he is mentioned). However, the story is sexy enough and the historical details interesting enough that few readers will mind. Marta Segal
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"A sweeping romance with intrigues in both fin de si�cle Paris and repressive Persia, Mossanen's engrossing second novel (after Harem) follows the sentimental education of a young seductress. Though Simone knows from a young age that she's too romantic to follow her courtesan mother, Fran�oise, into the family business, her grandmother, famed Parisian madam Gabrielle (n�e Ester Abramowicz), isn't so convinced. A really handsome man, she figures, can seduce Simone, and thus initiate her into the habits of wealthy courtesans. Gabrielle sets upon Cyrus, a handsome Persian jeweler, and Simone is intrigued by the man who supplies only the rarest diamonds to the shah's court ("Was the origin of red diamonds the blood of mistreated diggers, the blazing eyes of dragons guarding illicit mines, or the tears of children forced into hard labor?" she wonders). She succumbs to his charms -- but then they fall in love. Simone moves with her new husband to the rugged mountains of Persia to make a quiet life living as Jews in a Muslim country, but her happiness is short-lived. Abrupt shifts between times and locations confuse, but the engaging plot wins out. And while the sex scenes are a bit overcooked (Simone "directed the creamy gaze of her breasts" at a suitor), readers will find themselves gripped by spirited Simone's many adventures."
-- Publisher's Weekly
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Second Novel, Same as the First
By Ana Mardoll
Courtesan / 978-0-7432-4678-1
When I picked up Mossanen's "Courtesan" and "Harem" together at the local half price book store, I hadn't realized at the time that I could easily have just read "Harem" in order to get the salient contents of both stories.
"Courtesan" shares so many elements with "Harem" that the two books are almost functionally identical. Both books center around a multi-generational trio of women who are textbook Mary Sue characters. Grandmother, mother, and granddaughter all have implausibly-colored hair (azure blue, topaz yellow, and crimson red) and the author makes a big point of telling us that the carpet matches the drapes. Their eyes are equally implausibly colored as deep turquoise, slate gray, and golden yellow. These Jewish women serve as prostitutes to the local Persian gentry, and without any actual training they have managed to become world-renowned harlots; they even know the super-secret method to eunuch orgasms.
Incidentally, the ghosts of famous dead authors like to wallow in the big breasts and blue armpit hair of the matriarch of the family. I'm not making this up; I wish to god I was. In addition to the many famous and skilled authors Mossanen invokes sexually in this novel, she also invokes Oscar Wilde, who not only does not deserve this abuse, but I'm also fairly certain that he wouldn't be interested in these ladies, if you know what I mean.
The only real difference between "Courtesan" and "Harem", is the technique of switching point of view, timeline, and location randomly throughout the story. This is often done without signaling to the reader that a switch has taken place and what, precisely, the new narrator/setting/timeline combination is now.
The plot is largely basic, once you allow that all the main characters are two dimensional stereotypes. The grand-matriarch BlueHair of the "Honore" family (It's "ironic" because prostitution isn't usually considered an "honorable" profession.) was "forced" into prostitution when her Jewish family suffered starvation and privation during the war. However, "forced" is a bit of a stretch, since she enjoys the profession too much to quit once she is financially secure and she is adamant that her daughter and granddaughter follow in her chosen profession, even if they don't want to. The daughter, YellowHair, is more than happy to go along with this plan because she is a simple, pleasure seeking creature with very few thoughts in her head; however, the bold, beautiful, horse riding granddaughter RedHair has different ideas. When she falls in love and marries her first suitor, a rich, powerful Jewish diamond merchant, her family reacts with disapproval, which is terribly odd considering that she's single-handedly wrapped up the money and power they wanted her to get for herself. Sure, she's only servicing one man instead of hundreds, but this seems a small point to quibble over.
RedHair's True Love is a perfect husband except that he quickly gets himself murdered when he discovers that the suspicious rare "red diamonds" suddenly flooding the diamond market are a mite suspicious. He is murdered to protect the secret, in a blatant disregard for the economics of scare commodities: if the "rare" red diamonds are "flooding" the market, then suspicious or not, they're not going to hold a high value for very long. At any rate, RedHair vows to find the killer and her search is greatly aided by the face that her mother and grandmother have conveniently serviced everyone worth knowing in the jewelry industry, and a certain key player has a lifelong obsession with crimson red hair and has *never* found a true red head until he's presented with RedHair.
Like "Harem", "Courtesan" is plagued with frequent sex scenes that are not erotic and fail to advance the plot. Most of them revolve around some kind of kink: oddly colored female body hair, exhibitionist urination, eunuch orgasm, and so on. Also, Mossanen has still not learned that an author should show, not tell, so the pages and pages that tell us the personalities of her characters are quite worthless and would have been better served to be replaced by a few pages showing us their actions, thoughts, dreams, and/or desires. As it is, it is clear that these women do not HAVE desires except the most one-dimensional caricatures possible.
~ Ana Mardoll
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A historical fiction novel focusing on the theme of professional seduction and sex
By Bookreporter
The author of HAREM, Dora Levy Mossanen's latest work is COURTESAN, which, like her previous novel, focuses on the theme of professional seduction and sex. COURTESAN's protagonists are three women from three different generations: Madame Gabrielle, the matriarch and grandmother of the d'Honore family; Gabrielle's daughter, Francoise; and Simone, Francoise's daughter. Both Gabrielle and Francoise are courtesans --- high-priced French prostitutes. They're wealthy and powerful and have been in bed with many wealthy and powerful men. Simone, however, is repulsed by this life and believes in true love. Gabrielle tries her best to convince Simone otherwise, introducing Simone to her world by persuading a Persian jeweler to be Simone's first experience. Unfortunately for Gabrielle, Simone and Cyrus fall in love, marry, and move away to Tehran against Gabrielle's wishes.
The first half of the novel reads like a romance. The focus then shifts to Cyrus and his work with red diamonds. There is a mystery associated with these diamonds, as Cyrus thinks he's discovered something that is illegal and tries to determine what it is. When he disappears and is thought to be dead, Simone goes into mourning but is then determined to find out what happened to Cyrus --- and eventually finds herself in the middle of this mystery.
Cyrus courted Simone with red diamonds when he first met her, and he also wore a red diamond in his ear. The diamonds are central to their story, but at the same time Simone's need to be her own person and not the courtesan her mother and grandmother want her to be drives the story.
The shifts in time Mossanen employed throughout the book were not to my liking as they were choppy and without rhythm, but this did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. What I found most pleasurable were the characters and backdrop of the story. 1900s Persia and Paris offer a romantic setting amid the world of the wealthy courtesans. Madame Gabrielle, with her ability to speak to spirits, was especially fun to read about. She has all sorts of wonderfully interesting dead spirits hanging around her, including Franz Liszt and Oscar Wilde, and they can be found floating under her armpits and sitting on her breasts, giving advice or commentary. Very lighthearted bantering goes back and forth between Gabrielle and her many old lovers --- some long gone, others only recently deceased.
The character of Simone stood out because she's strong and not afraid to defy her family's "heritage." The most riveting part for me was learning about the true history of Simone's family and the fact that Gabrielle had hidden from her daughter and granddaughter their real identity and where they came from.
What Mossanen does best in her books is detail beautiful historically romantic settings and describe characters in such a way that they all come to life as on the big screen. Her stories span long periods and her characters' lives are based on history, but there is always that touch of the spirit world that sneaks into her stories. While COURTESAN could have used more structure, it was enjoyable and I'm looking forward to more of Mossanen's work.
--- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton [...]
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Just wasn't good enough
By Chandler Price
The characters were poorly written, and Simone never spends enough time or thought with any other character to make it believeable or to make us care. (including her husband, as they fall instantly in love, they move away, he gets shot.) I've read other books with quick pacing, but here everything is just too convienient, there is no real struggle, and I couldn't believe any of it.
There are also weird devices like her grandmother having spirits of her past (dead) loves hiding in her armpit, cleavage ect. who talk to her, or sing loudly and distract her thoughts. What was that about? I found it extremely annoying and distracting.
It was ultimately a dissapointment, because the setting deserved a better story. Can't say I'll be looking for any more of Ms. Mossanen's work.
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