A review by carolinevan
The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

4.0

Apparently I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this one! Tracy Chevalier's writing is always beautiful and immersive. She is so skilled at making her characters, their time period, and the setting feel alive.

I cried several times while reading The Glassmaker and a few days after finishing the book, I am still mulling over my feelings and trying to figure out why. There are the obvious reasons- lost love, yearning, people suffering because the world is unkind/indifferent, the inevitable creep of time and death…- but I don’t think that quite explains my reaction.

I liked this book and found it interesting, but I didn’t feel strongly invested in the characters themselves. So why all the tears? I think part of it is that I am old enough now to feel the weight of years past and to remember what it is like to be young and faced with big decisions that permanently shape your life. I am also quite sentimental when the mood strikes (and I have been in a very sentimental mood lately!) and am always a sucker for a bittersweet ending. Add in a few centuries of human strife and some poignant reminders of grief and human suffering (historical constants!) and you've got a tearjerker on your hands.

Orsola and Antonio: Ahh, the source of many of my tears. Orsola is an interesting character and I respected and mostly liked her. I did find her a bit remote though, perhaps because with the exception of her feelings for Antonio is is fairly stoic (unless she's angry with Marco). Antonio is also interesting with his confidence and drive, but we don’t get to know him that deeply and his time on page is fairly brief. I think what really moved me about Orsola and Antonio is the first love aspect, the intensity that developed between them while he was her lifeline during the Plague, and Orsola's choice of love/change vs. family/the familiar.

It always breaks my heart when circumstance forces people apart. I found it terribly sad that they lived in a world where if he’d chosen to stay on Murano with Orsola, Antonio would have had to resign himself to a lifetime of career stagnation and thwarted dreams. Their world was small and, with very few exceptions, people’s paths were quite set. I absolutely understand his excitement over going somewhere new and having the chance to build the life he wanted and had worked so hard for.

I also understand why Orsola wanted to stay with her family and continue in the life she knew. Change is scary, especially during a time period where travel is dangerous and leaving means you are almost guaranteed to never be able to return. Add in the “time alla Veneziana” aspect and Orsola would really have been leaving her family and home forever.

I cried when he left for Prague and she stayed. And I cried when she received the first parcel with a dolphin figurine. I cried because it had only been 6 months for Orsola and I knew, as she did, that the dolphin came from Antonio and meant he missed her and was still alive. That fragile connection across time and distance was really lovely and poignant. And I cried when it was only 8-ish years later for Orsola, but over 120 years later for the rest of the world, and I knew he must be dead, but she hadn't realized it yet.

And I cried again at the end of the book when Antonio's ancestor brought Orsola a dolphin figurine and explained that the family has been making and sending them to Murano for centuries. He also mentioned that naming girls Ursula (a regional variation on Orsola) is a family tradition as well. Learning this was bittersweet, because while Antonio was long dead, he became a maestro and built the life he wanted. He was successful enough that his work and lineage have survived and his ancestors still make glass. His family is cohesive and close enough that while the centuries have erased the reason, they have continued their lovely tradition of sending dolphins back to the old country. I found the idea of generations of Antonio's family honoring Orsola and Murano/Venice, even though they no longer remember why, really moving. It made me think about how traditions begin and change over the years and how the meaning and origins can be lost to time.

While Orsola’s life hasn’t been perfect, she did get to choose it. She has never wanted to leave Murano, never wanted to be a stranger, and I think she married Stafano (in part, at least) because he was familiar and safe. Stefano would never choose to leave, but would let her build her own path within the confines of family and tradition. She had love in her marriage, even though she wasn’t in love with her husband. And while she missed Antonio, over the years it had faded to a background grief.

I cried because Orsola is still here, but Antonio is long dead and she can no longer hope. I think it was the finality that I found so sad. Not just dead, but loooong dead. It made me think of all the people who watched a loved one leave for war or immigrate to a new country, and how for most of human history that has been the end. We have had to wonder and hope that they are safe, that they made it. The mixture of anguish and hope that goes with not knowing really struck me. Overall though, it was a good life and a good ending for both Orsola and Antonio.

Orsola’s family and friends: I really liked that each time period was particularly important for at least one character (usually because they died *tears*). Through their experiences and Orsola’s thoughts on it, I felt connected to each time period and what defined it. Sebastiano volunteered to fight in WW1 and was his family’s anchor to that time period. Stella is the family’s first woman to go off on her own and she becomes a nurse during WW2. Paolo and the grandmother died in the 1630s plague. Klingenberg left the city during Austrian rule because the new leadership made it impossible for him to continue running his business. Due to anti-German hostility, Jonas returned to Germany during WW1 and, as he was Jewish, was murdered during the Holocaust. The impact of these world-changing events on Orsola’s friends and family mostly happen off page, but we learn more about Orsola as a character and her changing world through them. There were a lot of side characters though and I think that lessened each of their impact. Though I did still get teary over the senselessness of so many deaths as they played out over the centuries. Humans are so adept at cutting each other’s lives short- a depressing constant throughout history.

The structure: I think the use of skipping stone time jumps was really interesting and I enjoyed seeing Murano and Venice change. The social changes feel subtle for most of the book and the major events that shape the narrative (the Plague, Napoleon conquering the region and handing Venice over to Austrian rule, etc.) didn’t feel incongruous because while they actually took place hundreds of years apart, they are all in line with the types of events/changes that could have realistically taken place over one lifetime. The events are in line with what someone born in 1900 would experience with WW1 - the Spanish Flu - the Great Depression - WW2… So I was able to roll with the time jumps and buy into that bit of magical realism

It wasn’t until we passed World War 1 that the time jumps stopped feeling smooth for me. Social norms, technology, and the world economy changed so much in the 20th century that I found it really hard to see how Orsola and her family could continue to fit in. Having Stefano die of covid and Orsola talking to her family on the phone was jarring and really tested my suspension of disbelief. I get that covid is just another plague and a cell phone is just taking the place of Orsola’s family talking in their shared courtyard or at the diner table, but it just felt wrong to me.

I also found that some of the time jumps ended up feeling repetitive because the family had to adapt their glassmaking business to a changing world again and again. I know change being a constant is a major theme of this book and that it fits the historical reality of how glassmaking as a business changed (from 100 artisanal workshops making both decorative and practical goods to a few workshops surviving - plus the factories mass producing tourist tchotchkes and China making fake “Murano glass”) as the world and the economy changed, but it still felt a bit monotonous at times.