Book Review: Mrs Rosie & The Priest; Giovanni Boccaccio.

While I was still in a big reading mood, I decided to make the most of it and grab the first of my new set of eighty little black classics. I love these gems because they give me a new reading experience every time.

SOURCE: Gift
TYPE: Paperback

TITLE: Mrs Rosie & The Priest
AUTHOR: Giovanni Boccaccio
SERIES: Little Black Classics (#1)
PUBLISHER: Penguin
PAGES: 54
GENRE: Classics, Adult, Short Stories

Blurb:
Four hilarious and provocative stories from Boccaccio's Decameron, featuring cuckolded husbands, cross-dressing wives and very bad priests. 









What I Liked:

• The first three tales in this collection were very different to what I expected from an excerpt from 14th Century Italian literature. They were not only fun, but also very bawdy and full of clever word-play and innuendo. I really enjoyed this aspect of them, especially as the characters were so full of life and personality. The women were intelligent as well as beautiful, every story had a lesson/moral and I have to say I enjoyed this saucy collection a lot.

What I Disliked:

• The final story made my inner feminist scream. And it also felt like it didn't really fit into the collection with the other three. Here, the sadistic, cruel husband tests his patient (aka meek) wife by publicly stripping her, verbally abusing her, pretending he has killed their children and sending her away and saying he'll marry someone else and then ends by giving her a pat on the back for putting up with it all. Ugh.

Overall Conclusion:

I started off quite well with this. Nothing here blew me away but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed this set. The last story was a bit of a buzzkill, but nevertheless this was pretty good and I feel like I've dipped my toes into a new reading pool and found it pretty agreeable.