The Marriage Portrait

merry_4015 shared a tip "A thirteen year old betrothed to her dead sister’s fiancé. This is a survival story that illuminates the very few freedoms and choices that women had in 16th century Europe."

diane_morello shared a tip "Historical fiction pulsing with life and suspense. Lucrezia de’Medici gets paired off with a duke from an Italian family. Fifteen years old, she strains against the duke’s domination, rebelling in small ways even as she suspects the duke of planning to kill her. Maggie O’Farrell has a gift for capturing and conveying the small things, the habits, the feelings, the despair that make up a life, as she did brilliantly in Hamnet. The Marriage Portrait does not rise to that level, but it comes close, and Lucrezia’s sense of claustrophobia as she copes with the controlling duke, his nasty sisters and the nearly complete loss of individual freedom represents a feeling that women at many ages share. The ending was challenging: Which future should I believe, the one introducing magical thinking or the one so sadly likely?"

melissa_craver shared a tip "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Listened to this on audio & it was perfection from beginning to end. Alternating between short chapters (including the 1st chapter) where young 15 year old Lucrezia de Medici is already married to 27 year Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara & is convinced he intends to kill her, with longer chapters beginning with her birth and her upbringing in her father’s loving Florence castle household. Although her upbringing has its eccentric aspects (her father kept a menagerie of exotic animals in the basement (lions, tigers & the like!), she has many siblings, was loved and she was witness to her parent’s loving marriage. This book is a fast read that is beautifully descriptive & well written. I especially loved the way the short chapters about Lucrezia & her fears of the Duke killing her can be interpreted in multiple ways- as the feelings of a homesick young girl, as her being an unreliable narrator, as an immature & inexperienced girl in regards to relationships or perhaps as someone who has become paranoid due to lack of company for long periods of time. The reader’s thoughts on this change as the book progresses. Although this is based on a real person, it’s best to just complete this until the author’s note at the end."