- He has brought her here, to this stone fortress, to murder her, reflects Lucrezia.
- Maggie O'Farrell, prize-winning author of the wonderful Hamnet, has written a new historical novel that is just as good. It's a highly dramatic story, utterly absorbing and tense.
- We're immersed in the the Renaissance period, the De Medici families, and their privileged aristocratic lives. They have maids, wet-nurses, advisors, guards, cooks, gardeners, and servants who bathe and dress them. Their multiple palaces are full of art and jewellery and surrounded by lush grounds and fields. Domestic tensions are commonplace and of course the servants witness everything, and talk to each other.
- Lucrezia, for political reasons, is forced into marrying Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, a region east of Florence. She is only 15 years of age. Her older sister Maria was to marry him but she died suddenly from a fever. Alfonso is a nasty piece of work. He is ruthless in using brutality to cement his authority. He must always get his way and not be contradicted. He is desperate for an heir to secure his reign. He forces himself on Lucrezia every night but after nearly twelve months of marriage no child is conceived.
- O'Farrell discloses in the very first chapter that Lucrezia believes he will murder her for not getting pregnant. The 'Historical Note' in the frontispiece informs the reader that ...in 1560, fifteen year old Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later, she would be dead. The official cause of her death was given as 'putrid fever', but it was rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.
- He is arrogant and self-entitled. She is simply a chattel. But inside herself she is passionate and rebellious. 'A fire kindles, cracks and smoulders'. She knows he is ‘…a vengeful, irascible monster in human form, a devil in collar and cuffs.’ She is a talented painter, bright and full of life. ‘It is not…in my nature to acquiesce, to submit’.
- We're immersed in the ugly pre-modern world of Men, Women and Marriage: strict, severe, absolute roles. The frequency of death of children and the young means procreation is central. It is about power and protection. Love doesn’t mean much, if anything at all.
- All sorts of dramas occur in the novel as O'Farrell builds the suspense. Out of frustration Alfonso gets the physician to examine her. ‘Her blood is hot and this can overexert the female mind...a tendency to emotional excess...She must eat cool foods...no excitement, no dancing, no music, no creative endeavours, no reading, except for religious texts...Oh, and I recommend that her hair be cut..
- The novel's tragic ending is expected, of course. We've been told all along what will happen.
- But did it?
- O'Farrell has given us a superb and beautifully written portrait of the traditional masculine and feminine worlds. Thankfully the one we live in today is radically different. Or is it?
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