Take 5 with Diana Giovinazzo: Antoinette’s Sister
By Writer Unboxed | January 9, 2022 |
We’re so pleased to bring you a Take Five interview with WU contributor and author Diana Giovinazzo! Diana’s latest novel, Antoinette’s Sister, publishes this month. She’s here to tell us about it, what the book taught her as a writer, and more!
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
A: Antoinette’s Sister is the story of Maria Carolina Charlotte, a Habsburg archduchess, Queen of the kingdom of The Two Sicilies, and the beloved sister of Marie Antoinette. Maria Carolina was thrust into a marriage in a Kingdom that was beyond anything her controlling mother could have prepared her for. But with the onset of the French Revolution, she risks it all when her sister is murdered, and the threat of invasion by Napoleon looms.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
A: There are many things that I would love for people to take with them from the story, from the fact that there was a whole country called The Kingdom of The Two Sicilies that existed prior to 1860 that played a major role in Italian history and culture.
Likewise, Maria Carolina is a woman who has not only been overlooked by history, but there were so many things that she did for her country from legal reforms, to restoring buildings, and even planting southern Italy’s beloved olive trees. She was responsible for bringing coffee to Naples!
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
A: Often, we think of Queens as being these all-powerful women, when really, they had just as much if not less autonomy than everyone else. Maria Carolina is faced with a constantly changing world, her beliefs of divine right are challenged by the new enlightenment philosophy and the concept of democracy. Likewise, what does it look like when one’s patriotic duty is to cater to the whims of a King, especially one as immature as her husband Ferdinand? Maria Carolina had to fight for her power within a patriarchal society. She was always torn between her ambition, motherhood, and putting the good of the country over her own family.
Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
A: Sometimes our challenges aren’t always from the writing itself. I started this book literally two weeks before lockdown so there were times when I had to lock myself in my office and not pay attention to the news or anything else so that I could focus on the story. In some ways that was a saving grace because I didn’t get as stir crazy as others. In other ways, it was a lesson in discipline in order to finish the book. When I was in the midst of editing my best friend had been informed that her cancer was terminal which presented a whole new set of challenges in writing through grief and learning if I could write regardless of the challenges I faced.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?
A: There was a meme that went around the internet at the start of the pandemic saying something to the effect of “William Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic, what can you do with this time?”
For some reason, I took it as a personal challenge and spent the pandemic writing my second novel. For me, being able to turn a bit of history into art in the midst of a global pandemic is incredibly rewarding.
Readers, you can learn more about Antoinette’s Sister on Diana’s website and by exploring the preview below. Write–and read–on!
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Write on!
Sounds fascinating, Diana. I love the little hidden but adjacent corners of history. And I took that Shakespeare meme to heart, too, albeit not as effectively as you, lol. Wishing you the best with it!