The Marriage Portrait is a fabulous exercise in the imaginary, in what could have been, in language that matches the ornateness of the gowns and at the same time the brutality of the manner.
Maggie O’Farrell takes a sliver of a glimpse of a character, a young girl in a poem and in a portrait, and weaves a rich and vivid tapestry of the brief life and marriage of Lucrezia dé Medici (1545-1561), the interplay of her powerful family, the court, her role as a tool of diplomacy and the hard edge of her husband’s character.
No spoilers here, but history just might have gotten her demise a bit wrong.
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
"O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you…
Deborah Levy weighs in with autobiography, but not the self-important or self-tortured brand, no, Things I Don’t Want to Know reads like a collection of anecdotes you might hear from a close friend over the course of decades that add up to a sense of why they are the way they are.
She shaves it down to essential experiences that may have shaped her (I don’t presume!) and in so doing, reveals the writerly eye she has had since she was a child. I greatly admired the skill with which she recounted childhood episodes from the eyes of the child, rather than the explanation of the adult. Most of us lose that voice; Levy has not.
Things I Don't Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell's essay, but also to Levy's own, essential oeuvre.
When Tyler Stovall published Paris Noir three decades ago, he was primarily looking at the experience of postwar (WWI and WWII) African-Americans who chose to emigrate to France to escape the racial bias and oppression of mid-20th century America.
To read his account today is to measure the distance traveled, both by France and by the United States, and the depth of their social transformation. In any case, Stovall recounts the adventures (and misadventures) of Black Americans in Paris in succinct, strong, and active prose, the stories are based on thorough research and the characters are endlessly fascinating.
