Vanessa's Reviews > The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love

This is definitely my favourite of the Penguin Great Loves series that I have read so far. The Eaten Heart is a selection of 11 of the tales from Boccaccio's Decameron, a text that I previously knew nothing about, but this little selection has definitely piqued my interest to read the text in full some day!

The stories contained in this slim volume are surprisingly bawdy and silly, and a lot were very good fun. From a young peasant pretending to be deaf and dumb to seduce a whole nunnery, to a ridiculous Carry On-esque bed swapping tale, the first couple of stories were light and fun. However, a lot of the stories took an equally sexual but dark turn, and I did really enjoy that aspect.

Not all of the stories however were as interesting, and there was a degree of repetition amongst them - a young couple who want to sleep together find a subtle way, and something happens as a result. Also, there was one story in particular (the longest one unfortunately), that involved a fair amount of rape - I understand that this book is from a COMPLETELY different time period, and this was probably fairly normal, but it doesn't make it any more fun to read about.

Overall though this is a solid collection of short stories, and a surprisingly quick read.