When I was in art school someone told me that I wrote (essays and dissertations) the same way I spoke, which I took as a compliment at the time, then overthought it into a terrible flaw, and now I’m kinda owning it again. So in the current war between ironic detachment and vulnerable honesty, I will always lean towards spilling my guts out – but, unfortunately, I am not immune to the appeal of a quirky one-liner joke that will be dated and cringey within the month. So, let’s get into it.


“It is quite astounding what a few words written on paper can do to a person.”

This was an interesting one to read during the conclave. Also, accidentally a prequel to Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, which I had planned on reading before this but I was just too excited to eagle dive into this epistolary historical fiction murder mystery art world intrigue soap opera greek tragedy set in the Late Renaissance period – this book contains multitudes, and it’s way more fast-paced than I thought it would be! The letters are so short! Rest in peace Vincenzo Borghini and Giorgio Vasari, you guys would’ve loved Whatsapp.
What else can I say? I’m an artist. I work with books, and I like it when they have cool formats like this. I love gossip. I love when the characters in a book are real people that I can look up on Wikipedia to learn more about what happened to them before/after the events of said book. So, of course this gets 5 stars. And of course I’m buying a physical copy as soon as I can. Thank you Laurent Binet for loving all those letters and notes you can find walking around looting every last corner in Assassin’s Creed, and thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for giving me the opportunity to read this and discover yet another author to be obsessed with.

I love historical fiction and Renaissance is one of my favorite historical periods! This book didn’t let me down and the mystery really captivated me. Despite a few historical inaccuracies, this book was pretty good.

A beautifully written literary mystery. I felt transported to Renaissance Florence! As someone who studied the Italian artists of this period at university, it felt very well researched.

This is an intriguing novel told through a long series of letters between a variety of 16th-century historical figures, predominantly artists connected to the court of Cosimo I de'Medici, Duke of Florence. I really loved the various points of view presented through these letters, as each person revealed different agendas, biases, and knowledge of the murdered man and the events possibly connected to his death. I read this as a scholar of the period, so I knew a lot about the characters, for better or worse, and I think that this was helpful in comprehending the background. However, I did find it hard to really get into the story and it took me much longer than anticipated to get through the book. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to provide an honest review.

This was a different read for me, written in the form of letters between different protagonists in 16th century Florence exploring a murder mystery.

For me however this taught me more about the intriguing politics amongst the art and beauty of Florence at that time.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the advance reader copy, in return for my own opinion.

Astounding, informative, gorgeous. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this one early.

My pulse raced throughout the well-wrought, fantastically twisted plots in Laurent Binet's PERSPECTIVE(S). It is historical fiction, mystery, marvelous romp through a world of power, privilege, and art -- the best escapist story I have read in a very long time, taking me back to Florence and enjoying the beauty concealing a city with deep history and great intelligence. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

Thank you so much to @fsgbooks for the gifted ARC!

I chose this murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence and involving Michelangelo and the Medici family because I will be visiting Florence this summer.

The atmosphere was fun and the writing was great. The epistolary structure allowed the author’s humor to shine, but made the plot too drawn out to ultimately hold my interest. Revealing a who-done-it is always tricky and a certain amount of repetition is inevitable, but in the case of this piece, it hampered my overall enjoyment. Still fun and I would read more by this author!

Although I did provide a mini review on my instagram and good reads (linked), I will not be providing a full, stand alone feature for this novel.

As expected Laurent Binet has written yet another novel that delights me for its depth of thought, its erudition, its wit, its overall amazingness. One heck of a read.

WOW! I was blown away by this one. A gripping, complex mystery and a lively cast of characters made for an unputdownable adventure. I truly had no idea who the culprit was until the very end and I was SHOCKED but it also made perfect sense, which is the absolute best way for a mystery to unfold! The writing was incredible, to write in a style similar to 1500s Italy but in a way where I completely understood what was being said and what was going on? That is TALENT! The drama, the gossip, the intrigue, the betrayals, the morality! It was fabulous and I will be thinking of it for a long time!

I was drawn to this story by its description of art and murder in 1500s Florence. With characters 8ncliding Michelangelo, Vasari, Catherine de Medici and many more, it is intriguing and unique, told all in letters.

Perspective(s)
By Laurent Binet

The title of this book is apt. It is a story laid out in a series of letters among a long list of correspondents – from the Duke and Duchess of Florence to the Medici Queen of France; also such illustrious figures as Michelangelo Buonarroti and Agnolo Bronzino; and even representatives of the Roman Catholic church from the Pope to various Prioresses of convents. Telling a story through letters is not unique – but including letters from so many varied points of view is!

The letters are dated at the end of the sixteenth century. The setting described is in Florence in Tuscany. Because the writers are so varied, the subjects are also varied. The letters address a wide range of topics – politics, religion, war, art and artists (and all their genius and petty jealousies). The perspectives are indeed very different and give the reader a rather more complete picture of the society of the time than he or she might glean from the correspondence between any two writers.

The only downside of the multiple letter writers was having to keep track of the long list of characters and how they are interrelated. While this technique showcased the wide range of perspectives, for me it slowed down the flow of the story.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Reading Laurent Binet's "Perspective(s)" felt like stepping into a cleverly constructed historical puzzle box, and I found it quite fascinating. I was really drawn in by the setting in Renaissance Florence and especially the unique way Binet tells the story – entirely through letters, notes, and snippets from different characters trying to unravel a central mystery. It’s a playful approach, blending real history and art history with fiction in a way I found very engaging. Piecing together the plot through all these varied voices felt like an enjoyable intellectual exercise, and there’s a distinct wit present in the writing. The exploration of 'perspective' itself, both in art and in how the story is told, was something I particularly appreciated.

While I truly enjoyed the intricate structure and getting immersed in the historical details, perhaps the sheer number of viewpoints and the fragmented nature of the letters meant that I occasionally needed to pause just to make sure I was connecting all the dots correctly. And maybe because the focus is so much on the clever construction and historical context, the deep emotional dive into any single character felt slightly less central to me compared to the overall intellectual puzzle of the mystery.

But overall, I found "Perspective(s)" to be a remarkably inventive and stimulating read. It's impressive how Binet plays with form and history in such an entertaining way. If you enjoy literary historical fiction that offers a clever twist and rewards a bit of reader engagement, I think this provides a very rewarding experience.

Life imitates art, and in this case, life is art.

Filled with murder, family drama, political insurrections, art feuds, forbidden love affairs, and nuns-gone-wild, Binet's epistolary novel, Perspective(s), is Agatha Christie--16th century Italy edition.

Well worth the read, enjoyable from every perspective. 3.5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher for this e-arc.

5 stars!!!!

This book, which is actually a "collection of letters" between the main characters, is a beautiful unraveling of the mystery of who killed Jacopo da Pontormo. Instead of a serial "whodunnit", you are instead transported to the lives of the people who lived in that time, including Medici family members, famous artists, and religious figures. This is not a book to be rushed through - instead, the language and imagery are to be enjoyed. There are moments of humor (the nuns!) as well as poignancy. You must be in the mood to linger over the voices and not want to rush, or else you would not enjoy this book.

Upon finishing I was compelled to look up more about the Florence Dome (which I visited 20 years ago), as well as the the figures portrayed in the book that I didn't know as much about. The author has done an amazing job imagining details of their lives that we do not know about for sure.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC

It's not nice to gossip and everyone knows reality television is the entertainment equivalent of, like, Surge soda. Getting your fix of that kind of plotting and backstabbing from historical fiction, though? That's just called reading. Take Laurent Binet's Perspective(s), now translated from its original French and ready for you to pick up and get in on all the drama in a court in sixteenth-century Florence. 

The grisly death of a painter, Jacopo, found in front of a fresco-in-progress in a Florentine church sets off an investigation—one made more urgent by the discovery of a painting within his studio depicting the duke's daughter, Maria, in a rather compromised position. Such scandal could derail her advantageous marriage to the brutish son of a neighboring nobleman. The duke demands the painting be immediately confiscated, even as the investigation continues. But the picture soon disappears as part of a plot to undermine the duke by his cousin, Catherine, the queen of France. The duke's investigators furiously try to solve both the murder and the theft of the painting with leads that stretch as far as Michelangelo (yes, that Michelangelo) and as close as the duke's own wardrobe.

Still, they seem to discover only side plots and dead ends, including a minor "plebian uprising" (read: unionization attempt) by one of Jacopo's employees and a disagreement on artistic style between nuns. Meanwhile, a page of the duke has promised Maria that he'll personally make sure the offensive painting is destroyed—promises that quickly turn into promises of love. Maria asks Catherine for her advice, and then support, should she elope with this commoner and flee to France, becoming yet another moving piece in this tapestry of plots and betrayals and subplots and back-stabbings that all seem to reveal more questions for the duke's investigators than they answer.

Told entirely through letters between the involved characters, the many threads of Perspective(s) can easily get tangled if you don't keep a thumb in the list of correspondents. This works very well for the most part, making the unfolding story feel like gossip you're gradually uncovering rather than reading a proper book. It walks the tightrope of sounding like authentic written correspondence while divulging enough details that we outsiders get adequate context. We don't need more explanation from the narrator—in this case, a traveler who introduces the book by telling of a fortunate discovery of this bundle of letters at a flea market in Tuscany—but I also wouldn't mind a little more from the narrator; other than the tale of discovering the letters and a few historical details like the difference in date of the new year and telling time in sixteenth-century Florence, our narrator is really a silent facilitator. It works, but it also makes the framing device feel superfluous, a detail added in the beginning but forgotten before the midpoint.

Among all our characters and all their plots, there are few to root for. The investigators are ostensibly the ones seeking to right a wrong, but they're also an extension of the will of the duke, who may be a product of his time but is not exactly what you'd call a benevolent leader. There are the plotters who are trying to remove the indecent painting from Florence, but their promises to destroy it are transparently empty and their ultimate goal isn't better than anything the duke could come up with. The artists on the fringes of the whole affair, including the one preaching the heresy of workers' rights, are sympathetic characters, as are the nuns and the foolishly lovestruck Maria. For them, they struggle to find a comfortable space between the bars of oppression. Some of them find it, while others aren't so lucky.

Yet this isn't the kind of book that makes you feel like the bad guys win, or that there are no victors worth rooting for. The epistolary nature of Perspective(s), along with the framing of the letters as centuries-old discoveries, blunt the unfolding of the unhappier plot elements, letting us sit back and relish the political intrigue. It carries the same kind of popcorn-munching near-taboo feeling as watching some really petty reality television. But it's about art, and it takes place in sixteenth-century Italy, and it has Michelangelo in it, and that totally makes it respectable. Read with abandon.

This was the mysterious historical fiction I didn't know I needed in my life. A huge thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC gifted copy for my review.

This was translated from French.

The stage is 1557 Florence, and the fresco painter Pontormo is found murdered in his studio at the Chapel of San Lorenzo. The cast of characters surrounding his death and the political waves that are rocked from it is what makes up the main plot. Driven by the commission by Duke of Florence Cosimo de Medici, our main detective Giorgio Vasari is trying to figure out who murdered the great artist and why. The why turns out to be multi-layered with more than one person who could have a motive. There is a missing painting, political uprising, plots to over throw the Duke, run-away daughters, etc.

The whole story is written by letters so it DOES take some brain power to keep all the characters straight, but after a few dozen of pages in things get more clear and familiar as the correspondences typically do not change between characters. I really loved the way the story was revealed letter by letter and while I had my suspicions who had done the artist in, it was a delightful reveal and really painted the whole Florence in the 1550s for me.

Excellently done and one I will recommend as a fun read! Had VERY similar vibes to a Wes Anderson movie (dare I say?) I really need this as a film.

Laurent Binet loves playing historical games. His last book Civilisations, imagined what would have happened if the Aztecs conquered Europe rather than the other way around. His latest book Perspective(s) (translated from the French by Sam Taylor) starts with what can only be called a classic conceit. The author has gone into an antiquarian shop and discovered a trove of correspondence which, when run together, tells the most amazing tale. The how and why anyone person would have gotten hold of all of this correspondence and then put it together in this order is a question left unasked, because it is unanswerable and would spoil the illusion. And the illusion is all that matters as Binet spins a wild a raucous tale of skullduggery in 16th century Florence.
It is 1557 and the artist Jacopo da Pontormo is found dead next his frescoes in a church in Florence. The ruler of Florence, Cosimo I dé Medici, tasks a fellow artist and art historian, Giorgio Vasari to investigate. Both Vasari and Pontormo, and others, were students of Michelangelo, who himself is in Rome overseeing the construction of St Paul’s. While this investigation proceeds a number of other events are taking place. Pontormo had produced a painting of Venus and Cupid but used the face of Maria, the 17 year old daughter of Cosimo Medici. Maria’s aunt, Catherine dé Medici, the queen of France, is trying to secure the painting to embarrass Cosimo. Maria herself is promised in marriage but has fallen for a courtier who seeks to spirit her away. And in another thread, Pontormo’s colour grinder Marco Moro is trying to organise workers who support these artists into a type of proto-union.
As can be seen from that precis, there is a lot going on in Perspective(s), all told through a series of letters between the various characters (a cast listed at the beginning that is much larger than that mentioned above including artist and rogue Benvenuto Cellini and an artistic nun). There is plenty of thematic heft here. There is the dispute about the nature of art and the use of nudes in particular which were starting to be frowned upon and covered over at the order of the new Pope, there is the question of perspective itself in art, there are considerations of privilege and entitlement, how far people will go to protect what they personally believe is sacrosanct. But Perspective(s) is no Name of the Rose, as it also more than a bit of a romp – with sword fights, secret agents, elopement, battles and natural disasters. Binet uses increasingly short messages to increase the pace of the narrative when he needs to.
Renaissance Florence is having a bit of a renaissance on the crime front. With DV Bishop’s Cesar Aldo crime series set in the first years of the reign of Cosimo I de Medici. And now with Perspective(s) an erudite murder mystery with plenty more story happening around the investigation and a surprising conclusion.

As someone who deeply enjoys art history (especially the Italian Renaissance), Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet was an absolute treat. It weaves an engaging murder mystery into a detailed historical setting, and I found myself completely immersed in the world the author developed.

Despite the large cast, it was easy to follow their storylines and roles within the larger mystery. One of the highlights for me was hearing from figures like Michelangelo. Historical accuracy could be argued, but exploring the thoughts and behaviors of these characters was exciting.

I often found it difficult to put the book down, feeling the urge to read the details contained in the following letter. I would recommend this to anyone who is fascinated by this artistically rich period of history, and suggest keeping an open mind!

Perspectives is a historical fiction murder mystery set in 16th century Florence. The novel is written through a series a letters sent back and forth by a number of characters , including Michelangelo. The story is full of political intrigue, ruminations on art and its importance to the culture at that time.
I enjoyed the back and forth of the letters that moved the many storylines forward. It sparked an interest in the art that was created in the time period.
The book contained humor, heartbreak and intrigue.
A few quibbles … some of the names of characters were very close ( starting with B and V) so at times it was confusing who was who. Some of the writing was too modern … describing someone as dazed and confused … seemed not to reflect the time period.
Aside from that I enjoyed Perspectives and would recommend this book to others
I rate it a 3.5… rounded up to a 4.
Thanks to net galley fir allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review
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