The Marriage Portrait

Although i appreciate the period, and I think O'Farrell writing was less florid than Hamnet the sum of the parts on this made up less than my appreciation of Hamnet.

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.

SUBLIME!!

Bookclub read [UoG]:

First impressions - the book is huge, a giant hardback novel, I thought I'd never finish it. The cover is gorgeous - bright flowers, snakes and that tiger. I note that every cover version has a tiger - I really like tigers and am even more intrigued. (The tiger is disappointingly fleeting then becoming a metaphor).

The writing is stunning, O'Farrell draws you in instantly. Her words create a world that you can see, smell, feel and taste. It is obvious that there has been in-depth research done. The world is so real, the characters believable - flaws and all.

I want to know more about the people behind the scenes, the servants and painting assistants - they are infinitely more interesting than Lucrezia.

I felt I knew where it was going, but the ending was a bit ambiguous and I found myself let down. I almost enjoyed it against my will.

3.5 stars.

When a book starts with the following historical note “In 1560, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin married life with Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she would be dead, rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.” You know that you are in for a wild ride! I had really high expectations going into this book after just finishing ‘Hamnet' and falling in love with Maggie O'Farrell's writing. Her immaculate descriptions were again present, however, I found the pacing of this book to be much slower than her other work. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and loved the jumping timeline from past to present between chapters. Unfortunately, some of the chapter were over 100 pages and I personally felt were dragged out too much and not adding all that much to the story.

Lyrical writing, once again. I got so attached to the Duchess I had to slow down the reading.