I am always going to buy Tracy Chevalier’s novels. My favourite is still A Single Thread, but I have liked them all.
Here’s the blurb …
Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle.
Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime.
Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.
The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna – but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her?
This had an interesting structure with time. Chevalier used the metaphor of skipping a stone over water to explain the way time worked in this novel. The rest of the world might skip 100 years, but Orsola and the people close to her only aged 8 years. In this way, we could witness the evolution of glassmaking from the 1400s to now.
I enjoyed this novel, but the end felt quite melancholic. Orsola was grappling with ideas of Tourism and Making. Is she adding to the world’s problems by making things that no one really needs? But surely there is a place for beautiful things? And tourism? Good or bad? All that air travel?