Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jasperfrancis 's review for:
The Marriage Portrait
by Maggie O'Farrell
dark
tense
medium-paced
When discussing historical women, an air of acceptance is every and bland. We conclude the otherwise terrifying, doomed stories with "Well, that's what happened to young women back then." Here, however, Maggie O'Farrell shows that women, internally, did not conclude their she-tragedies with generalizations and sorrowful, bland footnotes. O'Farrell contrasts women in restriction with that of beasts, tigresses, their bars not cages but camouflage. Lucrezia summons resistance, timid at first, but later calling upon the reader to feel this denial, this fevered opposition.
The prose is beautiful, examined as though through a magnifying glass for its sharpness. The whole thing, if you're invested enough (which you should be!) feels like standing on a ledge with one foot off the ground. Something about the writing is so crystalline. This crystal-quality is compared to O'Farrell's take on these Renaissance women, whose countenances were once blurred in history books (unless queens) and has made them into dynamic vivisections, taking the suffocation from their lives and giving it a name; terror. Terror of being born to marry, terror of living with a man you do not know, terror of suppression at the altar.
Nothing is forgotten by O'Farrell. A shared hue of the hair, honey water, stone martens upon tavolo. Everything comes back, everything is important, necessary for each level of this story.
I will never forget this book. The imagination of it, the clarity of a once dusty, blurred scene--- to quote Assosciated Press's review, "O'Farrell has taken a historical footnote [...] and added imaginative strokes that paint a different picture."
Or, an underpainting, richer than the layers washed away in vinegar.
The prose is beautiful, examined as though through a magnifying glass for its sharpness. The whole thing, if you're invested enough (which you should be!) feels like standing on a ledge with one foot off the ground. Something about the writing is so crystalline. This crystal-quality is compared to O'Farrell's take on these Renaissance women, whose countenances were once blurred in history books (unless queens) and has made them into dynamic vivisections, taking the suffocation from their lives and giving it a name; terror. Terror of being born to marry, terror of living with a man you do not know, terror of suppression at the altar.
Nothing is forgotten by O'Farrell. A shared hue of the hair, honey water, stone martens upon tavolo. Everything comes back, everything is important, necessary for each level of this story.
I will never forget this book. The imagination of it, the clarity of a once dusty, blurred scene--- to quote Assosciated Press's review, "O'Farrell has taken a historical footnote [...] and added imaginative strokes that paint a different picture."
Or, an underpainting, richer than the layers washed away in vinegar.