Later, but still in the nursery, she reveals another superpower, a skill in perspectival drawing that impresses the artist Giorgio Vasari. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it. While Lucrezia is a character to be worried about and to feel sorry for, she is also a character I could not relate to. Her husband's mother has gone back to France and is practicing Protestantism which is heretical in Alphonso's view.

The Marriage Portrait: A Novel (Random House Large Print) The Marriage Portrait: A Novel (Random House Large Print)

Horror stains the narrative, introduced by dreams and fantasies, and by the terrible screams Lucrezia hears one night, coming from her husband’s room in a battlemented tower of Ferrara’s grim castle.

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. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell review – a dark The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell review – a dark

She is sixteen years of age, and the marriage is an attempt by her parents, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Tuscany, to ally with Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. I have no problem understanding that people from different times behaved very differently from our current society and I am an avid reader of historical fiction because I love learning about different times and cultures. So I hate to say that I found The Marriage Portrait a big disappointment, but it was a slog to read on many levels.

Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Short chapters recounting the events of the following hours alternate with much longer ones giving us the backstory from her childhood onwards.

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

Biography: Maggie O'Farrell is the author of HAMNET, Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I AM, I AM, I AM, both Sunday Times no. I did read the entire novel, mostly because of my affection for the author and her work, but it took me quite a while to finish the book, not because it was long, but because it was hard to sink into the prose and story.When Wellington confronts Bonaparte at Waterloo, the carnage is horrific as cannonballs rip bodies to shreds. From there the two narratives move forward in tandem: We see Lucrezia growing up to be sacrificed to political maneuvering that mandates her marriage to the suave Alfonso and growing aware in Ferrara that her outwardly courteous and kind husband is brutally determined to cement his shaky hold on the dukedom and ferociously intent on making sure she produces an heir. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here.