Historical Fiction | Book Chatter

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
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Horse
By Geraldine Brooks
Published by Viking, June 2022,9780399562969, 416 pp.

The Short of It:

An interesting snapshot of a time long gone.

The Rest of It:

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history. ~ Indiebound

Based on the true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a living and breathing account of Kentucky in 1850 and beyond. Jarret is the enslaved groom hired to care for young Lexington. A horse bred to win, but the unusual bond between the two is threatened to be broken when Lexington begins to get the attention of those wanting to profit off of Lexington’s noble lineage.

Fast forward to 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist becomes curious about a skeleton found in the attic of the museum. As she works to restore it, properly articulating each bone, she realizes that a horse of this stature most likely had quite a history. Enter Theo, he finds a discarded painting of a horse and it turns out that the two are related.

Horse is one of those stories that spans decades and includes many key players but the story that held my attention the most was the bond between Jarret and Lexington. Everything else, although interesting on its own, took me away from what I really wanted to focus on, this magnificent creature and the boy hired to care for him. Status, race, slavery. It’s all here.

This is not a book I would have picked up on my own but as a book club book, I think there will be plenty to discuss.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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