The desperation and hopelessness of her situation, particularly as a woman at that time, was both infuriating and heartbreaking to read about.

The Marriage Portrait: the Instant Sunday Times Bestseller The Marriage Portrait: the Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

Not that the young are generally respected; this is still an era when a child can be hanged for stealing 6 shillings worth of ribbon for his mother to resell for bread; when criticizing the government is a crime punishable by prison; and when two or more employees are forbidden by the 1799 Combination Act to criticize their employer. Her husband's moods are mercurial, and she finds he is not particularly kind and harbors a streak of cruelty. Then again, on further thought, I didn't feel any compatibility with any of the characters: the 15-year-old bride Lucrezia, her bold and controlling husband Alfonso, her jealous sister, conniving sisters-in-law, uncaring parents. It was beautiful to read, and captured the historical setting, however as the story progressed it took away from some of the dramatic tension and mystery.I loved the main character with her passion for drawing and all the background detail of the Rennaissance, although I must admit that sometimes she overdoes the detail a bit and I did skip the odd paragraph or two. Favourites included Violet Needham (The Woods of Windri), Margaret Irwin (Royal Flush), and – most pertinently here, in terms of subject matter – Marjorie Bowen’s darkly gorgeous The Viper of Milan, much admired by Graham Greene. The author develops tension with a split time frame, opening in 1561 in “a wild and lonely place” to which 16-year-old Lucrezia is quite sure Alfonso has brought her to be killed, then circling back to depict her childhood in Florence, including a life-changing encounter with a tiger in her father’s private menagerie. And, without the "rooting" effect, I found myself at a loss as to why I continued to read about her journey. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior.

The Marriage Portrait: the Instant Sunday Times - WHSmith The Marriage Portrait: the Instant Sunday Times - WHSmith

Before Hamnet, I might have heard of this author, but in the rush of everyday life paid her no particular mind. I suspect O'Farrell had to make some tough creative decisions to spin a tale out of such thin cloth in terms of actual history.Instead, in The Marriage Portrait, the writing is rich and descriptive in a way that I have not seen before in O'Farrell's work. The rollbacks to earlier periods spark some impatience as Lucrezia’s 1561 dilemma becomes more pressing, but O’Farrell’s vivid portrait of a turbulent age and a vibrant heroine mostly compensate for an undue lengthening of suspense as Lucrezia struggles to defy her fate. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way).

The Marriage Portrait: the breathtaking new novel from the No

Her novels include AFTER YOU'D GONE, MY LOVER'S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. I only had a vague recollection of My Last Duchess from my university days going into this book but I liked the reimagining of that story. I loved Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet so when her latest book was published, I was anxious to read it. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Bowen was herself only 16 when she wrote The Viper: in 1906 it was repeatedly turned down by publishers shocked that such a young female author should be drawn to matters so unladylike. In a surprise ending, which suggests O’Farrell doesn’t believe in it herself, she allows us to escape it. Finally, she knows her life is in danger, and the only one who can help her is an assistant painter working on her marriage portrait. Set at the heart of the treacherous political world of the Italian Renaissance, this is the masterful story of a young woman's battle for her very survival, written with all the drama and verve that made HAMNET an international bestseller.

THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT | Kirkus Reviews THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT | Kirkus Reviews

Her husband's mother has gone back to France and is practicing Protestantism which is heretical in Alphonso's view. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Finely written and vividly imagined, it is far from being simplistic, but there is an engaging simplicity to it that makes it feel not quite like a grown-up novel. Where Hamnet’s emotional punch (read it and weep) was powered by its psychological and social realism, The Marriage Portrait is set in a world as fabulous as that of a millefleurs tapestry and inhabited by beings as flatly emblematic as embroidered ladies and their unicorns.

Now O’Farrell has shuffled historical fact, portraiture and poetic fantasy together and used them as the basis for a piece of fiction in which a simple tale, of a girl forced too young into a dynastic marriage, is overlaid and embellished with elements from fairytale and myth. I recommend it to anyone interested in the lives of royalty during this period and, in particular, the lives of aristocratic women. This is a gripping story that has at its core the little-known life of Lucrezia de' Medici is a pawn in her family's desire for power and her husband's desire for an heir.