Maggie O'Farrell | 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.

Hamnet
By Maggie O’Farrell
Vintage, 9781984898876, May 2021, 320pp.

The Short of It:

Did you know that Hamnet and Hamlet are one in the same?

The Rest of It:

Maggie O’Farrell wanted to give a voice to the boy we knew so little about. Hamnet, the son of William Shakespeare, who died at the age of eleven. The thing is, there is no record of Hamnet’s cause of death, anywhere. His death is believed to be caused by the plague, but no where is this confirmed. In O’Farrell’s novel, the way Hamnet dies is quite different from what you’d expect. Cracking open that first page of a book titled HAMNET, and especially since the author wanted nothing more than to give a voice to this boy, you’d expect the story to be all about Hamnet, but instead, it’s about his mother, Agnes and really motherhood in general.

As I was reading this book, I fell into the flow of the writing. It seemed poetic to me. I lingered here and there because of how melodious the words were as they rolled off the page. This was, dare I say it, a pleasant read even though it’s about death, the plague, and grief.

Telling us about Hamnet, through the grief of his mother was an interesting choice. Powerful at times, but there was a tiny touch of magical realism (in my opinion) that took me out of the narrative for a minute and I was left reading that section over and over again to make sense of it and to consider why the author chose to go that route.

We discussed this for my book club. I’d say that most liked it a lot, some loved it, a couple weren’t impressed. I loved the writing but honestly, I expected more of Hamnet and his famous father. William Shakespeare is never named in the story. He’s the boy’s father, the Latin tutor, and eventually the playwright. It’s not until the very end that you are even introduced to his craft. I will say that the ending was quite thoughtful and a touch sad.

This is a book that will stay with me, even though it left me wanting more.

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

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