Tag Archives: Venice

#BookReview ‘The Instrumentalist’ by Harriet Constable #historicalfiction #Venice

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18th century Venice. A baby is posted through a hole in the wall at Ospedale della Pietà, a hospital for orphaned girls. She is one of many left there, mostly by sex workers. They are fed, educated and, if they have the aptitude, they learn a musical instrument. The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable imagines the life story of Anna Maria della Pietà. Harriet ConstableBased on a real violinist, Anna sees musical notes as colours swooping, swirling, dancing. She believes fiercely that she is special but this ferocity also makes her vulnerable. In her relationship with her music master she is looking for musical success but secretly hopes to find a father-figure. Unnamed, I assume the maestro to be Antonio Vivaldi. Little is known about the real Anna Maria and this frees Constable to imagine her life, her successes, failures, challenges and betrayals.
Anna is a precocious violinist at the age of eight, her ambition and zeal to succeed is familiar nowadays but I’m not sure how typical it was for an orphan in 18th century Venice. The language occasionally drifts into modern-day vocabulary and grammar. Understanding that her life can only be changed if she joins the figlie di coro, the ospedale‘s orchestra, Anna Maria becomes accomplished at playing the violin and in musical composition. There are riches to be gained when the orchestra performs, donations to the ospedale from wealthy donors, gifts for the performers. The stakes are high, girls who fail are quickly married off. Friends are sacrificed.
In places, the writing is indulgent; repetitive description is pretty but doesn’t move the story along. Two-thirds through is a different phase showing the real Venice and the dirt and injustice beneath the wealth and beauty. The perfume made of jasmine distilled in pig fat, used for a week before being discarded. The hand-made lace cuffs and handkerchiefs made in a sweatshop. Shimmering red silk and the red blood of a newly killed piglet. A reminder of the binary life of girls at the ospedale; gifts and benefits come with musical excellence, musical failure means housework, training in lacework, laundry or being sold into marriage.
An intense novel set within a constricted building in a city that is at once beautiful and threatening. Every baby girl left at the ospedale must find a way to survive in an unforgiving world but will always wonder if her mother will return to her. I finished The Instrumentalist wishing the story was broader, focussing equally on the three childhood friends, Anna Maria, Paulina and Agata and not just on Anna Maria.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Glassmaker’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘City of Masks’ by SD Sykes #3OSWALDDELACY
‘The Garden of Angels’ by David Hewson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE INSTRUMENTALIST by Harriet Constable https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8v3 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Abir Mukherjee

#BookReview ‘The Glassmaker’ by @Tracy_Chevalier #historical #Venice

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Enthralling from the first page to the last, The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier is by far the best novel I’ve read so far this year. It’s a heady mixture of beautiful glass, Venice in rich times and poor, passion, jealousy and intense competition, focusing on Orsola Rosso and her glass-making family on Murano island within the Venice lagoon through the centuries to the present day. Tracy ChevalierChevalier introduces us to the idea of time-skipping in her brief introduction. ‘The City of Water runs by its own clock. Venice and its neighbouring islands have always felt frozen in time – and perhaps they are.’ And so we follow the same family across six hundred years. In the first chapter in 1494 we meet nine-year old Orsola; this is her story, told in leaps and skips across the centuries. The second instalment of Orsola’s life is in 1574 when she is eighteen years old. Those close to her have aged similarly, only Venice is at once the same and different. Its an ingenious way to tell the story of the Rosso family, the ups and downs of the glassmaking business, their loves and losses, the wars and disease, all set within the framework of Venice and of Murano glass.
When Maestro Lorenzo Rosso dies, Orsola’s eldest brother Marco must take charge of the family business but he is impulsive and designs flamboyant impractical pieces. When contracts are lost and Marco is in his cups, Orsola learns the art of glass bead making. The business of glassmaking is always kept within the immediate family, different families have different specialities, and so matches are made for the sons and daughters of maestros according to the skill or wealth of the incomer. Orsola knows she must marry one day. Her mother and brother’s selection of the man to be her husband is pragmatic, it turns the direction of the story and influences everything that follows.
Life is lived in a bubble on Murano island; loyalties are intense but so is hatred and rivalry. While most women are mutually supportive, others are jealous and ambitious. Murano families rarely go to Venice, Venetians don’t go to Murano. None of them go to the mainland, terraferma. Above all for these families who live close to the bread line, security of employment and supply of food for the family is the primary concern. We follow the Rossos through feast and famine, war, plague, flood and Covid.
So many of Chevalier’s novels are based upon a specific craft or skill – art in The Girl with a Pearl Earring, embroidery in A Single Thread, tapestry weaving in The Lady and the Unicorn, fossil-hunting in Remarkable Creatures. The Glassmaker is another homage to skilled craftsmen who create beautiful objects that last across time.
A magical story, beautifully written. And what a gorgeous cover!

Read my reviews of other novels by Tracy Chevalier:-
A SINGLE THREAD
AT THE EDGE OF THE ORCHARD
NEW BOY
THE LAST RUNAWAY

If you like this, try:-
‘Disobedient’ by Elizabeth Fremantle
‘How to be Both’ by Ali Smith
‘Nat Tate: an American Artist 1928-1960’ by William Boyd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GLASSMAKER by @Tracy_Chevalier https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7xg via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Victoria Hislop