The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell.
Have you ever wondered how a 300
page novel can be created out of a 19th century poem that describes
a 16th century Italian painting? If you have, then The
Marriage Portrait is the book for you. As the heroine notes toward the end, her “place is filled, her portrait will take up
her role in life.”
Though it is beautifully crafted, I feel if you are a woman, you will be more emotionally attuned to Lucrezia's inner life struggles. O’Farrell seems to have hit on the 16th century as the ideal place for her to write about women whose stories have been overshadowed by the men in their lives. If you have read her Hamnet, you will remember that it focuses on a woman (Shakespeare’s wife) who languishes in Stratford while the supposed real life is going on at the Globe. The main difference between the two stories is that Shakespeare just ignored his wife whereas the Duke of Ferrara set out to kill his wife and deny her any sense of an inner life. Others have spoken eloquently of O’Farrell’s rich imagining of 16th-century Italian courtly life and her lush imagistic prose, so much so, that they have claimed her work is worth reading just for that element.
In spite of this I must admit I found it hard to stay involved. I finally put the book aside for almost a month before going back at it. When I returned, I realized that the first two hundred pages tell us our heroine thinks she will be killed by her husband and then tries to sustain the impending doom by jumping the narrative back and forth in time. By coming back to the book some weeks after I started it, I was able to forget how long the murderous thought had been pushed forward only to be pulled back by returning to a time before it was uttered. Now, with the early struggles a dimmer memory, I was able to luxuriate in the final rapid and surprising denouement with ease. Score one for keeping at it.
One final requisite for any reader. You need to read or re-read Robert Browning's glorious poem "My Last Duchess." The entire book is all there.
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
looking as if she were alive”
