After fulsome adoration of HAMNET and LAND, I reached for the novel by Maggie O’Farrell in between those two that I’d missed: THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT (Headline Publishing 2022). Written in O’Farrell’s consuming and evocative style, it is another triumph of characterisation, place and plot.
THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT is perhaps more of a traditional historical novel than the other two. Set in 1561, it centres on 16-year-old Lucrezia, married into the title Duchess of Ferrara when she was betrothed to the elusive, charming, unknowable and unpredictable Alfonso. Until their marriage, Lucrezia led a sheltered life with many siblings, doting parents, countless servants and soldiers to ensure their safe and easy life in one of Florence’s grandest palazzos.
A twist of fate (rather than love or even prior arrangement) orchestrates her marriage to Alfonso, a man much older and more experienced than her. But she is determined to be a good wife, and to represent her family name in words and deeds.
The novel shifts backwards and forwards in time, beginning on a journey when Alfonso takes Lucrezia away from her maids and entourage, and away from his protectors and the stability of his established manor, to visit a country villa. A beautiful place, by all accounts, but the natural wonder cannot unseat Lucrezia’s creeping suspicion that Alfonso means her harm, perhaps even to kill her at this isolated place, without witnesses. But she has only her wits about her to guess at his motives or plans. What is she to do? What can she do? She is no match for Alfonso’s strength, resources and power.
So the novel opens with this very tense time in the countryside, Lucrezia trying to predict her husband’s actions, then goes back through flashbacks and memory and sidebars to her childhood and growing up and all that has led to this one moment of terror. After the first chapter, the reader feels all is lost. What chance does she have? But subsequent chapters reveal that Lucrezia is clever, sly, witty and well used to the bartering and push and shove that occurs in large families. She is not without her own resources, few though they may be.
As a very young child, it was rumoured she had touched a tiger, and that the beast didn’t harm her, in fact let her stroke it, almost as if she had charmed it.
My only (small) criticisms of this book fall towards the end so I can’t say much without spoilers, but I will say that I thought the book was rushed, or finished more quickly than I expected. I would have liked to see more of the final pages. And secondly, the narrative device used by O’Farrell for the resolution is very like one she has used in another recent book; again, no spoilers, but I did get a bit of a de je vu feeling, almost like I’d read that / seen that done before.
But … tiny critiques in what is undoubtably a magnificent historical novel filled with the romance, drama, tragedy and comedy of the time, and with a truly wonderful and engaging female protagonist. Despite being set over 500 years ago, the characters are as real and compelling as if they lived today – their language, motivations, desires, ambitions, worries and loyalties as relatable now as five centuries ago.
And something I do love about all of O’Farrell’s books is that they proffer alternate possibilities to the history recorded in books, paintings, birth and death ledgers, church and state records. They demonstrate how easily these names / details could be changed back then with the stroke of a pen. No digital footprint. And then the new information becomes true, becomes history, and people rely on it going forward. Even now, 500 years later, when researching, we rely so easily on documents that could easily be forged, damaged, misrepresented, erroneous or purposely duplicitous.