The Marriage Portrait
the Instant Sunday Times Bestseller, Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- €5.99
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- €5.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023
A Reese's Bookclub December Pick (2022)
An Instant Sunday Times, New York Times and Irish Times Bestseller (August 2022)
A Guardian and LitHub Book of the Year (December 2022)
'Every bit as evocative and spellbinding as Hamnet. O'Farrell, thank God, just seems to be getting better and better' i newspaper
'Her narrative enchantment will wrest suspense and surprise out of a death foretold' Financial Times
'Ingenious, inventive, humane, wry, truthful . . . better than her last novel' Scotsman
'Finely written and vividly imagined' Guardian
'In O'Farrell's hands, historical detail comes alive' Spectator
Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here. He intends to kill her.
Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence's grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband.
What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival.
The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Northern Ireland-born, Edinburgh-based O’Farrell’s ninth novel is the beguilingly gripping, fact-based story of a doomed duchess. Set in 16th-century Italy, it follows teen bride Lucrezia, the misfit third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, ruler of Florence. Lucrezia finds herself forced into an arranged marriage with Spanish duke Alfonso as a substitute for her older sister, who dies shortly before their wedding. Life with the sinister, controlling Alfonso soon becomes a gilded cage. At a remote rural villa, she realises her husband plans to kill her. However, Lucrezia senses a kindred spirit in Jacopo, mute apprentice to the artist commissioned to paint her portrait. Can he help her survive and even escape? The Renaissance world of courtly intrigue and fairytale castles is creepily atmospheric. O’Farrell’s intimate third-person narrative, urgently written in the present tense, takes us deep inside Lucrezia’s mind as she recalls her eccentric childhood and imagines all manner of nocturnal horrors. Full of poetic imagery and richly descriptive prose, this is a haunting historical fable with a memorable heroine and Hitchcockian twist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This lush, provocative historical from National Book Critics Circle Award winner O'Farrell (Hamnet) follows a young woman who is married off at 15 amid the complex world of 16th-century Italian city-states. O'Farrell bases her heroine, Lucrezia de' Medici, on a real-life figure depicted in Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess," who was murdered by her husband. When the reader first meets Lucrezia, she's been married for not quite a year and faces mortal danger in what O'Farrell describes as a "wild and lonely place." The narrative moves back and forth from the nearly deserted fortress where Lucrezia plays a game of cat and mouse with the duke of Ferrara, the husband who might be attempting to kill her, and the events that have brought her here. As a child of a noble family in Florence, she was untamable and passionate about making art. Now, the duke grows increasingly impatient with her as she fails to produce the heir he needs to secure his position. O'Farrell excels at sumptuous set pieces: Lucrezia's encounter with a tiger her father keeps in the basement beneath their palace, the wedding where she is draped and almost swallowed up by her gown, her meetings with the mysterious figures at her new home, particularly her enigmatic husband. By imagining an alternative fate for Lucrezia that deviates from the historical record, the author crafts a captivating portrait of a woman attempting to free herself from a golden cage. Fans of the accomplished Hamnet won't be disappointed by this formidable outing.
Customer Reviews
Loved it
Kept me hooked until the last minute. Great story and great writing style.