In June, the Village Literary Club will read The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (2023, 253 pp). Readers may know O’Farrell from her wonderful, best -selling novel Hamnet. Like Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait takes inspiration from real events. It is set in 16^th Century Italy in the court of Cosimo De’Medici, the Duke of Florence. Its subject is Lucrezia, the Duke’s 15 -year -old daughter. Like Hamnet, the novel takes us into the everyday domestic world of women and children, here living in the cosseted world of the Florentine court, a perilous one for a young girl of marriageable age considered crucial to the building of a dynasty. Compelling historical fiction.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash