SOURCE: “Endless Torments,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4812, June 23, 1995, p. 26.

In the following positive review of A Thousand Orange Trees (the British title for Poison), Humble notes that the novel focuses on the connection between beauty and cruelty.

Set in seventeeth-century Spain, A Thousand Orange Trees twists together the stories of two women born on the same day, whose lives are devoured by the bloodthirsty Spanish state. Francisca de Luarca, the daughter of a Castilian silk-grower, is arrested by the Inquisition after a love affair with a priest and is tortured as a witch. Marie Louise de Bourbon, the niece of Louis XIV, is transported from her beloved Versailles to marry the childish and impotent Spanish king, and is tormented by his court when she fails to provide an heir.

The stories of both women's lives are narrated by Francisca, who has been taught to read and write...