The Rosetti Letter

History and romance are what we’re going to get in The Rosetti Letter. This dual story novel of past and present days from Christi Phillips can be considered a major success and a good friend for history lovers. The past days part tells story about the 17^th century Venice, especially events surrounding the Spanish Conspiracy toward Republic of Venice. Phillips did add some fictional character to this part, the main character of the past days part, named Alessandra Rosetti, a famous prostitute of the days. The story, beside entertaining us with the build up of the conspiracy itself, actually majors in the life of Alessandra Rosetti as a woman who was left with no choice but to become a prostitute. Little that she knew at first that her choice was going to take into passionate love, hardship, pain and finally miraculous change to a happy ending. While the present days part tells a story of Claire Donovan, a historian in pursuit of her Ph. D degree who was once heartbroken by her divorce. Connecting these past and present days is Claire’s dissertation material which was all about the Spanish Conspiracy from the point of Rosetti Letter, a letter believed to be sent to the government by Alessandra Rosetti regarding the Spanish Conspiracy. By chance, Claire got an opportunity to go to Venice for her further research. Also little that she knew that at the end of this journey to Venice, she would find not only answers for her dissertation but also a way back to civilized life and love in life.

Judging from the similarity of the two characters of the past and present days, we get the story of two women who had to struggle and went to certain hardship before finally landed on happiness. What differentiate this story from other common romance stories is that the happy ending in here wasn’t all about getting together with their partners but having what each character had desired and wanted in life and changing of life that each character actually needed and that was undone before because of the circumstances.

The story was majorly set in Venice which by Phillips’s description gives us a glimpse of this beautiful floating city with its bridges, canals, festivals and also views in certain time of the day. The buildings, the roads and the places was described really well and certain that we can actually feel we’re being on a gondola trip through Venice canals. For some of us, beside being addicted to Christi Phillips’s work, reading The Rosetti Letter can instantly get us online to find tickets to Venice.            

The way Phillips tells the story in dual mode is kind of keep the boredom away from us, as we might hate reading history or romance for again and again. The dual mode also makes the romance not too much and not too common as romance novel usually tells about the cliche plot of the love, the break up, the pain and the getting back together. While the history part of this is certainly not a boring history book at 20 cm thick because the history part itself is actually made into fictional, only some character, the background history, and some aspects or attributes of it isn’t fictional. Also the way the story switches between past and present days when one part is being so interesting makes us want to keep reading throughout the book until we come across the interesting part again. Also the events and plot of the story is quite unpredictable which keeps us out of boredom as well as making a good companion for the day. The way Phillips writes her words can be considered suitable for young and old readers since it has some humor as well as quotes or expression, little thinking and other adult materials. All of them are brought together smoothly into a story.    

Not only that it’s entertaining in its whole 521 pages, The Rosetti Letter also teaches some good lessons from both main characters which was expressed beautifully by Phillips. We see in this book how life which has been crushed down can be built up again and formed into a better one, following it, is how a person should never give up the world and the love no matter how bad the situation has been because it brings us to a sweet destiny of ours at the end. Also we can draw a little conclusion of how choices in our lives are never actually wrong as long as we take them because of following our desire. Not to mention that it might bring us to some adventure of lives as in lives of Alessandra Rosetti and Claire Donovan.

So, don’t wait any longer to indulge ourselves in the story of life and love in Venice, both in present days and in 17^th century.