The Marriage Portrait
by Maggie O'Farrell · 2022
Literary Fiction · ranked #107 in category
Lucrezia de' Medici, married at fifteen to Alfonso II of Ferrara, becomes convinced that her husband is planning to kill her. O'Farrell's novel is based on the real woman who may have been the subject of Browning's 'My Last Duchess', and asks what it meant to be a young woman of extraordinary ability given in marriage to a powerful man who required her compliance.
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The verdict
- Category
- Literary Fiction
- Author
- Maggie O'Farrell
- Standing
- Essential Read
About Literary Fiction
Literary fiction sits at the intersection of fine writing and serious storytelling — novels that reward attention and stay with you long after the last page. These are the books that alter your sense of what's possible in prose.
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