Ed's Reviews > The Marriage Portrait

"Hamnet" was my top read of 2020, so it's difficult to say I didn't come into Maggie O'Farrell's follow-up without some high expectations - so much so, I ordered it in hardcover. That said, I felt like I had tempered my expectations that this wouldn't be "Hamnet" -- but still I ended up being a bit disappointed. This is still some stellar historical fiction, but I just felt like something was missing in here -- a connection to the characters or that spellbound feeling I felt with "Hamnet." This is definitely a slow-burn of a book that seemed to shift into a higher gear, where readers know the ending on Page 1 -- 15-year-old Lucrezia Medici dead after one year of marriage to the Duke of Ferrara. The literary trick of revealing the ending at the beginning is the ability to build tension and momentum to get to that inevitability and that just was not my experience. I see other readers/reviewers disagree with that assessment, tho it's more easily confirmed by the current 4.20 average after 20k+ ratings, so don't necessarily make any rash decisions based on this review!

I have to admit I was additionally slightly bothered by O'Farrell's afterward/author's note. I know it's ridiculous to think we can know all that much of the truth/events of things that happened in Italy in the 1550s/1560s, but why not just write the fictional novel you wanted to write vs. forcing a story with so many creative alterations onto real-life individuals. I realize my hypocrisy as O'Farrell pretty much did the same thing with Shakespeare and his family in "Hamnet" and I did not have a problem with hit then, but maybe because I was so enthralled with a story of a pandemic and loss in the midst of our contemporary one.

3.5 stars but a Goodreads round-down to a "liked it" 3 stars.