amanda_lou 's review for:

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
4.0

The story of the imaginative, artistic, perhaps slightly mad Lucrezia de Medici who was married off at age 13 to a sadistic Duke Alphonso. A surprising end — not a twist exactly, but not exactly comfortable … This book — as opposed to Hamnet — somehow kept me at a distance from the main characters… I just found I did not care about any of them. But as usual with O’Farrell, the prose shines gloriously. Particularly gorgeous was the internal narration of Lucrezia, who simply sees the world differently. So in all, totally enjoyable read, if a bit… formal and impenetrable.