“That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive”
I don’t know about you, but I’m keeping track of Rae’s imaginary BFF’s. That girl’s got taste. I too have some best friends in my head. Lately, Maggie O’Farrell is my bestest and brightest pretend friend. To quote Rae, “If we lived next door to each other, I just know we’d get along swimmingly.” Maggie may suggest otherwise, but that’s the thing about pretend friends—my dream world, my dream details. If you haven’t heard, Mags has won a slug of awards for nearly a dozen books. (We’re talkin’ critical acclaim stuff.) She hails from Ireland. If you guessed redhead, you guessed right. Like King George VI, she suffered from a pronounced stammer when she was young but made her way to Cambridge just the same. Maggie is a literary queen. Frankly, she had me at Hamnet. The fact that she followed her award-winner about Shakespeare’s son with a novel equally compelling rocks my bookish socks clean off. Which lucky historical figure caught Maggie’s eye this go around? Lucrezia de’Medici.
If you haven’t heard of Lucrezia don’t worry, you’re not alone. History barely snagged a glimpse of the 15-year-old girl who married the Duke of Ferrara. Mags not only pulls back the curtain to reveal the inner world of a 16th century Italian noblewoman, she quietly exposes the unfairness of gender and social mores at the time. Lucrezia, a girl predisposed to nature and art, is relegated to confinement—she commutes from one of the Duke’s “prisons” to another. Of course, the Jane Austen lover in me is enchanted by O’Farrell. (Jane has always been a number 1 pretend friend.) She too masters the meaningful layers beneath the surface story.
If you’re not into literary layers, you’re still in luck. My BFF’s got you covered. The Marriage Portrait begins with the Duke taking his now 16-year-old wife to a dank “hunting lodge.” Flanked by a dense forest, they sup alone at a long table in a darkened hall. We read, “This is the reason for their sudden journey to such a wild and lonely place. He has brought her here, to this stone fortress, to murder her.” Mags creates intrigue on page one. I couldn’t turn the rest of her pages fast enough. (Actually, I listened to Genevieve—the voice of Harry Potter’s Pansy Parkinson—on audible and loved it; my BFIMH is on there too!) What a star you are, Maggie O’Farrell. Keep ‘em comin’, I pray you!
P.S. Hats off to fab poet Robert Browning who immortalized Lucrezia in his famous poem “My Last Duchess.”
One more P.S. Rae and I snatched this Book of the Year finalist long before Reese put her sticker on it. Why do I feel the need to put that in print?