Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson

Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson
Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson

London in the Roaring Twenties: women empowered by their experiences of the Great War, men scarred emotionally and physically.

Are the nightclubs ruled over by Nellie Coker Shrines of Gaiety or Dens of Iniquity? Both, really.

Another smashing novel from Kate Atkinson that blends the worlds of Jackson Brodie and the Todd family.

Author page: Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson

The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell

The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O'Farrell
The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell

Another wonderful historical novel by Maggie O’Farrell.

We are in 16th century Italy, still a patchwork of Dukedoms and city states, where Lucrezia de’ Medici, the third daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora of Toledo, La Fecundissima, has been married  to Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.

As the bride in this dynastic marriage, Lucrezia replaces her elder sister, Maria, following Maria’s death. Lucrezia is 13 at the time of the wedding in 1558. Three years later she is dead.

It’s wonderful and fascinating how a novelist can take such a slight array of facts and create something so rich and absorbing, and yet still so intensely personal.

Whilst it is written in a very different style from Hamnet (no tears were shed in the reading of this novel), the elaborate prose suits (Maggie O’Farrell’s) Lucrezia’s inner voice – she observes the world with an artist’s eye and experiences life and emotion in extremes,  as many teenagers do – and the richness of Italian Renaissance art.

I know nothing about Robert Browning’s famous poem My Last Duchess. The Marriage Portrait does not exist; but this portrait by Alessandro Allori does:

Alessandro Allori - Lucrezia de’ Medici - North Carolina Museum of Art.jpg

Other reviews:

Author page: The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell

The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith

The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith
The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith

Another investigation with Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott and the gang, in which Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) portrays social media trolling and abuse, online gaming and fandom, and misogyny.

In the background, the will-they-won’t-they plotline continues.

Plus, I’m loving Pat!

Author page: The Ink Black Heart – Robert Galbraith