I keep coming back in my mind to reading Hamnet in February. I hadn’t read Maggie O’Farrell before, and I was so impressed I was just waiting to come back to her. The Marriage Portrait—her newest book, from 2022—was my chance. While it did not disappoint, I ended up liking Hamnet better, but only because of a few things, one main thing. Overall, the writing is breathlessly beautiful, the story poignant and taut. But it is wordy. And the ending… I loved the book, but was let down by that ending even though I found what happened satisfying, just not how.

Lucrezia is the third daughter of the Duke of Firenze. It is the 1550s and her sister dies before she can be married off to the soon-to-inherit Duke of Ferrara. Before she realizes what is happening, the too-young Lucrezia is promised to the soon-to-be Duke. She clings to her familiar home where she has been cloistered her whole life, lost in her painting and her wild imagination. But before she’s even sixteen, she’s married to man she doesn’t know and carried off to her new home across mountains and away from everything she’s ever known. And no one ever tells her what is going on. It’ll take months before the truth sets in: she must produce an heir for the Duke. And fast. Or else.

The Marriage Portrait is historical fiction based very loosely on the life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este, who was married to the Duke of Ferrara. There are a few surviving paintings of her, and it is thought Robert Browning’s “My First Duchess” was about her. Because Lucrezia was the first Duchess of Ferrara and she died not long after marrying the Duke. There were rumors of foul play.

It is a fact that I have a lot more to say in a review about a book I didn’t like or that I can’t decide if I like or not. I have much less to say about a book I enjoyed or even loved. I don’t know how much I am going to have to say about The Marriage Portrait because I don’t have much to whine about. It is doubtful it will be near as much as I said about poor Radiance. I just couldn’t stop complaining about that one.

It is official; O’Farrell can write. Man, can she write! Her prose is so lush, so beautiful. (See quotes below.) She is so creative in the way she says a thing, everything. I get lost in her writing, in her style, in her imagination, in her description.

What I can complain about: it begins with the same complaint as with Hamnet, about the tenses changing all over the place. And there were just way too many words in this one, like O’Farrell wasn’t edited nearly tightly enough. But my big issue was with the main character and the ending—it was all coincidences and no spirit, no fight. I could see every detail about it ahead of time, but it would have been much more powerful (even if I saw it coming) if there was some agency, if Lucrezia had had ANYTHING to do with the outcome. (I was recently accused of letting a side character have the final moment of victory in a book—that person would be horrified if they read The Marriage Portrait.)

I understand—part of the point of this book is that women, especially this daughter of a powerful man in the 1550s, would have no agency, no recourse or alternative to anything especially if the husband who essentially owns her is some sort of psychopath or maybe has a personality disorder. (Does he? That’s part of the mystery. Who is this guy? What’s not a mystery is that Lucre is kept ignorant and innocent of so many things and then valued only for her fertility, will be discarded if she doesn’t have that in spades). However, for the sake of story, she should not have been allowed to stay in this truly uncomfortable, painful reality. Just for the sake of story. We already get the point; we can feel her naivety and powerlessness in our bones. She can grow and move on at the end.

Though there is enough of a twist. Even if it’s a twist made up of coincidences. I was kept on my toes, on a high wire, throughout much of the story, and on some level, I was happier with the ending than I thought I was going to be.

Not to make this sound like some sort of thriller. The only way we get tension is through the back-and-forth narration, between the chronological story of Lucrezia’s life and her moments in an isolated fortress where she realizes her husband is trying to kill her. (Or is he?) There are many, many scenes that build layers of beautiful imagery and lush setting and even reinforce character way more than they move the plot forward. Lots and lots of palazzo scenes and. Always claustrophobically close to Lucrezia. Which is part of how we feel her in-the-darkness and helplessness. Still, too many of these scenes, too many words.

But what lovely words! I did enjoy it. I would recommend it. I would propose it is a study in how not to let your ending happen to your heroine. There were many moments that Lucre could have done something—even a small thing—to at least help with her ending. Then it would have been almost perfect. I’ll still be waiting to read the next O’Farrell (which for me will be I Am, I Am, I Am; she has not announced any new project but has a backlist I can get work my way through).

“It would return to her, she knew, this story, in the dead of night. Iphigenia, with her slit throat, like a vibrant scarf, would shuffle up to the bed where Lucrezia lay, and she would paw at the blankets, wanting to touch Lucrezia with her cold, bloodied fingers” (p28).

“She has reached a place where all she craves is an end to the torment, the bodily suffering. Any end at all” (p93).

“She lifts her chin, seizes the candle from Emilia and thrusts it out at arm’s length. She is not afraid, no, she is not. A beast—muscled and brave—lives within her. She tells herself this over the cantering of her heart. Let the ghouls that hover in the corners of the room see what they are dealing with: she is the fifth child of the ruler of Tuscany; she has touched the fur of a tigress; she has scaled a mountain range to be here. Take that, darkness” (p128).

There is supposed to be movies for both Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait in the works. They each have directors and some other things.