The Marriage Portrait
Ratings46
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings46
Average rating4.2
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court. “I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick) "O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what’s coming, but don’t be so sure." —The Washington Post Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble? As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance. Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.
Reviews with the most likes.
Lucrezia has always been a difficult child. When she is asked to marry the ruler of Ferrara in the stead of her dead sister, she begs her father to allow her to remain with her family in Florence. But the wedding takes place anyway, and off the young girl goes to a land of intrigue and dissent, a land for which she is poorly prepared. Her husband, too, is perplexing, kind one day and cruel the next. It is immediately clear that her husband is desperate for an heir to resolve some of his kingdom's issues, but it doesn't seem at all certain that Lucrezia will be able to provide one.
A rich novel, with strong and complex characters, set in a time when even bold girls like Lucrezia had few choices.
Can't decide if this was a 4.5 or 5 for me but all I know is that it was a masterpiece.
I'm fairly obsessed with history so any chance I get to learn about a new person or time in history I'll take it and inhale it.
So on the one hand I enjoyed learning about Lucrezia and her short life, however I really struggled with the way this was written.
Another review summed my thoughts up perfectly - "the plot got lost in all the symbolism".
When the plot was plotting I was so into this, then it would veer off for pages and pages about paintings and animals and other things, which I sort of got the symbolism of those things but it was just SO much that it took away from the story.
It may just be the authors style (this is my first from her so I'm not sure) but there was some odd ways of describing events, saying something like "later she would recall that they did x, y and z" but it was in the middle of scene, instead of just adding a scene set later recalling the event. It was so jarring and stopped the flow of the narrative.
I ended up switching to audio part way through this and I'm glad I did, the narrator (Genevieve Gaunt) was great and I'm not sure I would have persevered if I hadn't.
