The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

Book 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?

My Review

I have read all of Tracy Chevalier’s books and there isn’t one I haven’t fallen in love with. After four years she is back with this mesmerizing and origional novel, The Glassmaker. Set over five hundred years of Venice’s history of Glassmaking, told through the eyes of Orsola Rosso and her family. This is a book of the role of women through history, the artisan crafts and how they are effected by progress and the importance of family.

I was excited to hear that Tracy Chevalier had written another novel and that it was set on the Island of Murano. Tracy Chevalier always has an inventive and origional feel to her books and The Glassmaker is no exception. Starting in 1486, when the Murano Glass Industry was at it’s height, sending their wares all over the world, to 2019, Covid and the acqua alta that caused so much damage to the buildings. I was fascinated by all this history, the plagues, change in rule, the emergence of electricity and glass factories opening across Europe and how Orsola and her family had to adapt on a professional and personal level. I loved that at every jump in time, Tracy Chevalier grounded that period with cultural, political and social references of the period to put what was happening in Murano and Venice in perspective.

Orsola is a wonderful character. Inspired by Maria Barovier, a female glass worker, Orsola wants to become the same, but this is a man’s world of heat and strength. However, Orsola learns how to make beads and soon earns her own money. The family have so many changing fortunes over the course of the book, from running a successful business, to harder times when fashions changed and when plague hits having nothing as they are unable to work. What shines through in Orsloa’s story is the importance of family, yes there are disagreements, marriages, death, births that all change the structure of the family, and need for progression but they still have each other, family is still the most important thing.

The Glassmaker is a tour de force from Tracy Chevalier. In a lot of her novels women and their place in history and she continues this theme in this book. Orsola’s story is fascinating, her journey of hiding that she makes money, to not being taken seriously to having the most profitable skill in the family. There is no doubt that this is an Ode to Murano and all the families that worked there and still work there. This is an innovative, captivating and immersive read, that covers half a century, and a book I highly recommend.