Portrait of a Marriage by Maggie O'Farrell

Let me start off by saying that I loved this book and I loved it as much as I loved Hamnet. The author has found her sweet spot in the 16th century and her subject in women whose stories have been overshadowed by men. Here, the historical figure is Lucrezia, the third daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence. The historical Lucrezia was married off at the age of 13 to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, as a last-minute substitute for her older sister, Maria, who died just before the wedding. Then Lucrezia herself died, supposedly of tuberculosis, though it has long been thought that she could have been poisoned by Alfonso. The idea for O’Farrell’s novel took root in soil prepared by Robert Browning’s famous poem My Last Duchess. Browning’s dramatic monologue takes us inside the mind of the Duke of Ferrara, as he shows a painting of his former wife (Lucrezia) to a representative of the family of his next bride-to-be. An avaricious megalomaniac, the duke prefers her ever-smiling portrait to the original girl because the image is inert and easier to control. The novel opens with Lucretia becoming all too aware that her husband means to kill her, and then it ping pongs back and forth between the present and why it has come to this.