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“The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O\u2019Farrell<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Regular readers may remember that we reviewed this book briefly last month; it was received by one of our group from our \u201clucky dip\u201d read in December. Our group member recommended that we should all read it as our January book.<\/p>\n The author Maggie O\u2019Farrell has based this book loosely on historical characters who lived in 16th Century Italy. Lucrezia de\u2019 Medici was a 16 year old who, it is rumoured, may have been murdered by her husband. The author came across a very small oil painting of Lucrezia and felt that she could imagine the life of this young girl who died at such a young age.<\/p>\n In 2020 O\u2019Farrell started writing a novel about this imagined life. The book focuses on Lucrezia who was the third daughter of the Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici of Florence. Her older sister was betrothed to 27 year old Alfonso, Duke of Ferra. Sadly, this young woman died before they married and it was decided that the 13 year old Lucrezia would become Alfonso\u2019s wife. The marriage is one of political convenience and Lucrezia is a pawn in this power union. The story starts one year into the marriage and Lucrezia is convinced that her husband is intent on killing her. The narrative rewinds to show the reader what has happened in Lucrezia\u2019s life to reach this point. O\u2019 Farrell\u2019s writing is descriptive and she paints vivid images. She beautifully illustrates life in an Italian court in the 16th century and the insignificance of women in the courts of powerful men at that time. The story alternated between two time periods and several members of the group did not enjoy this, stating that it was difficult to follow.<\/p>\n The group also spent time discussing whether this book could be classed as a historical novel or a novel with historical content. The majority of the group felt that they became emotionally engaged with the characters especially the main one, Lucrezia and enjoyed the surprise ending.<\/p>\n Although two members of the group felt that this was not one of Maggie O\u2019 Farrell\u2019s best novels, the rest thoroughly enjoyed the story and gave it strong recommendations. The overall score was 8 out of 10<\/p>\n “The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O\u2019Farrell Regular readers may remember that we reviewed this book briefly last month; it was received by one of our group from our \u201clucky dip\u201d read in December. Our group member recommended that we should all read it as our January book. The author Maggie O\u2019Farrell has based this book loosely on historical characters who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6cWjO-3EU","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13958,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=13958","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":0},"title":"Recent Holiday Book List","author":"Alan Williams","date":"13th February 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Various Books Read over the Holidays During the December meeting of The Page Turners each member contributed a book to a lucky dip. Whichever book was drawn, was to be read by that member and then discussed during the January meeting. The results are briefly summarised below and each book\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Wenvoe Page Turners"","block_context":{"text":"Wenvoe Page Turners","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=41"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16496,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=16496","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":1},"title":"“This Must be the Place” by Maggie O’Farrell","author":"Alan Williams","date":"30th December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 \"This Must be the Place\" by Maggie O'Farrell If you haven't noticed, it's the award season in the film world with Oscar and Bafta nominations for the best film and TV programmes from 2025 being discussed. To start our December Page Turner meeting, a vote was taken to decide\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Items for January 2026"","block_context":{"text":"New Items for January 2026","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=429"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15336,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15336","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":2},"title":"“This must be the place” by Maggie O\u2019Farrell","author":"Alan Williams","date":"9th April 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\"This must be the place\" by Maggie O\u2019Farrell The plot of this book is a love story between Daniel, a professor of linguistics and Claudette, a famous film star, who has decided to vanish from public gaze. Each chapter is like a short story, introducing a new, believable character. By\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Items for May 2025"","block_context":{"text":"New Items for May 2025","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=421"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10141,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=10141","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":3},"title":"The Salt Path by Raynor Winn","author":"Alan Williams","date":"24th August 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At last the Covid 19 restrictions relaxed enough to allow us to meet in Jill\u2019s lovely garden with delicious cake to follow! We discussed The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. For Raynor Winn and her husband Moth, the cruellest of diagnoses and the simultaneous collapse of their business opens an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Wenvoe Page Turners"","block_context":{"text":"Wenvoe Page Turners","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=41"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15128,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15128","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":4},"title":"Traditional \u2018Lucky Dip\u2019 At Christmas","author":"Alan Williams","date":"7th February 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2018Lucky Dips\u2019 At Christmas It has become somewhat of a tradition for a \u2018lucky dip\u2019 at Christmas for the Page Turners group. Everybody wraps a book and it is pot luck what you pull out of the hat. At our January meeting, members share their surprise gift. This year was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Wenvoe Page Turners"","block_context":{"text":"Wenvoe Page Turners","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=41"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6618,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=6618","url_meta":{"origin":14068,"position":5},"title":"\u2018The Age Of Innocence\u2019,Novel By Edith Wharton","author":"Alan Williams","date":"30th September 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2018The Age Of Innocence\u2019,Novel By Edith Wharton This month\u2019s book was \u2018The Age of Innocence\u2019, a 1920's novel by American author Edith Wharton. The book is set in the 1870s, in upper-class New York Society. Although we appreciated Wharton\u2019s attention to detail, we found the book introduced too many characters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Off The Shelf"","block_context":{"text":"Off The Shelf","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=347"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14069,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions\/14069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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