The Marriage Portrait

SUBLIME!!

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.

Can't decide if this was a 4.5 or 5 for me but all I know is that it was a masterpiece.

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.

Was Hamnet een heel fijn boek waarin we vanuit eens een ander perspectief naar een stukje geschiedenis keken (de vrouw van Shakespeare), dit is wederom een heel fijn boek waar we vanuit eens een ander perspectief naar een stukje geschiedenis kijken (Lucrezia, het kindbruidje van de hertog van Ferrara).

Eigenlijk had haar zus met hem moeten trouwen, maar die gaat vlak voor het geplande huwelijk (gelukkig?) dood. Niet lang daarna constateert Lucrezia, die vooral voor nageslacht moet gaan zorgen, dat zij ook binnenkort dood zal zijn.

“Her husband is sitting down, not in his customary place at the opposite end but next to her, close enough that she could rest her head on his shoulder, should she wish; he is unfolding his napkin and straightening a knife and moving the candle towards them both when it comes to her with a peculiar clarity, as if some coloured glass has been put in front of her eyes, or perhaps removed from them, that he intends to kill her.“

“How will he do it? Part of her would like to ask him this. The knife in a dark corridor? His hands about her throat? A tumble from a horse made to look like an accident? She has no doubt that all of these would fall within his repertoire. It had better be done well, would be her advice to him, because her father is not someone who will take a lenient view of his daughter's murder.“

We schakelen tussen vlak voor het huwelijk, vlak na het huwelijk, en wat verder in de tijd, als er een portret van de bruid geschilderd moet gaan worden. Meer en meer blijkt dat de hertog een man van meerdere gezichten is... Op haar wordt de druk om kinderen te krijgen steeds een beetje opgevoerd.

“She is given a new herbal preparation, this one with an acidic aftertaste and a yeasty smell. The doctor instructs that she be allowed to sketch babies, no more than once or twice a day. Strong, healthy babies, he says, and male.“

De spanning wordt langzaam opgevoerd - is zij nou gek, is hij gek? Op het moment dat je denkt dat het over is, weet het O'Farrell er toch nog een behoorlijk onverwachte draai aan te geven :-)

“He would have meant to say, ‘beautiful duchess', not ‘first duchess', because ‘first duchess' makes no sense, none at all: it sounds as if he believes there will be others, in the years to come. And that in itself is so wild, so strange a notion, as to be impossible. He meant ‘beautiful' all along. She is certain of it.“

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.

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

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.

3.5 stars.

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.