The Marriage Portrait
By Maggie O’Farrell
Vintage Books, 9780593315088. July 2023, 352 pp.

The Short of It:

Marriage can be hard, especially when your husband wants you dead.

The Rest of It:

Florence in the 1550s. Marriages are carefully arranged to preserve
status, to guarantee the continuance of the family line, and sometimes, attraction is taken into consideration. But in The Marriage Portrait, young Lucrezia stands in for her sister who passed away right before her wedding. Lucrezia is just a child. Far too young to be married so her nurse manages to delay their joining for a short while, but Lucrezia doesn’t want anything to do with any of it. She just wants to roam her childhood home, drawing and painting her natural surroundings.

As much as she fights it, her parents fully support the union and what it will mean for their family. Lucrezia is young but once she becomes a woman, she should be able to produce many heirs which is what her future husband Alfonso is counting on. But we learn very early on that Lucrezia will not survive this marriage and what unfolds is an unputdownable story.

I enjoyed O’Farrell’s previous book, Hamnet so when it came time to choose another book for book club I chose The Marriage Portrait and it did not disappoint. It’s full of beautiful passages, and centers itself around art and beauty, even with the threat of something darker lurking in the background. The characters are well-developed and although the story is based on true events, O’Farrell gives Lucrezia the ending that she wants her to have. It’s very well done and now I’ve added all of O’Farrell’s books to my Libby list.

Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
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