librarysue 's review for:

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

5.0

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I have not always been a fan of Maggie O'Farrell but I LOVED this one! She gives us a vivid look at life in 16th C Italy (so glad I didn't live then!) and a very suspenseful imagining of what might have happened after the ill-fated marriage of teenage Lucrezia de'Medici to the Duke of Ferrara. The story is a fast-paced nail-biter (altho told in O'Farrell's typical free-floating prose, and with a fair amount of shifting timeframes as well): you think you know what is going to happen but the ending is a big time surprise. Well done!