Mike’s Reviews > The Decameron > Status Update

Everyone is wasting away from pining after beautiful people, dying of broken hearts. Never has the word FICTION had more meaning.

No, Giovanni, domestic violence is NOT the way to resolve marital strife.

Ninety-six stories down, four interminable tales to go.

Fourteen stories left. I'm looking forward to the next book, whatever it is.

Just over 1/4 of the stories behind me. Keep on rolling...

The only positive depiction of the clergy thus far is a dude who died at the start of a story and subsequently was impersonated by a complete tool, who was afterwards canonized. All the rest have been lecherous monks, lecherous nuns, and incompetent friars.

But one beset merchant extolled St. Julian for bringing him through his trials, and the framework storytellers keep the sabbath. Commentary on social religion?

All sorts of things happen in these stories, and I don't think Boccaccio is interested in forcing his morals upon the reader. People do all the messed up stuff and still come out ahead.

Ah, to live in a blissful world where everyone rises at the same time, all the food is made for you, there's nothing to do but twist garlands from the grasses and entertain one another with stories.

Some of these stories are not that great, though.

Now that we've set up the framework of ten young people taking up residence in a palatial estate just outside Florence during the Plague Years, we can get to the meat of this tome -- the one hundred short stories told by each member of the group.

It works out to 8.5 pages per story. Let's get crackin'.

Boccaccio: women are the weaker sex and more prone to lovesickness, but it's tough to have everyone else make your decisions for you and spend your life locked away in your room, so I wrote these tales to save womenfolk from the loom and the spindle, hoping to provide distraction and pleasure.

I guess that passes for feminism in the 14th century...