I haven't read a book which has this kind of timeline before. For Orsola Rosso and her family time moves slowly, whilst life in Venice and the rest of the world moves quickly. The Glassmaker is set against the backdrop of Murano and Venice and everything that happens to the city over 500 years, is mirrored in the fortunes of the family. 

Tracy Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is vivid, inventive, spellbinding: a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as their glass. I've always enjoyed her books, some of my favourites include The Lady and The Unicorn, Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Single Thread and Remarkable Creatures. I love that they feature so many crafts and skills, and that she often learns the very crafts she writes about. Glass blowing is fascinating and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn a little more about it.

Like some of her previous books I found the details of the glass making slowed the pace initially. I found a similat problem in the book about Winchester Cathedral.

Another classic from Tracy Chevalier! Thus great slice of women's historical fiction focuses on a family of glassmakers on the island of Murano, just outside Venice. It discusses their relationships and business problems, while weaving in so many historical details about the glass trade and Venetian trade. I particularly liked the scenes set during plague quarantines, which were clearly influenced by Covid and brought the repeated terror of the plagues in Venice to life. One really interesting choice was that the author repeatedly skips forward in time, but instead of moving to another generation, simply has the main characters skip forward too, in an almost magical realist way. This could have been very jarring, but it actually served to show how little changed in the backwater of Murano, and how people were essentially living in a medieval way for centuries. Thoroughly recommended.

This is a glorious read! I was swept away to Venice and became fully immersed in life there to the point of not wanting to step back into my own life when I had to put the book down. I love Tracy Chevalier’s books and this is now my favourite. She has created a wonderful opportunity for the reader to move through time with spirited Orsola Rosso and her family, learning about the craft of glassmaking and experiencing life in Murano and Venice at important times in history. I found it absolutely captivating. The way that the characters move forward in time without ageing at the same rate is so clever. The members of the Rosso family are appealingly flawed and genuine. I felt invested in their lives and wanted them to succeed. The sense of place is incredible throughout and made me feel as though I had been transported to Venice and Murano, and was experiencing the sights, smells and sounds with the characters. I won’t forget this book any time soon!

As usual in my reviews, I will not rehash the plot - instead I recommend that you read this for yourself!

I've read several books by Tracy Chevalier, and this is my favourite!

As usual, the author has clearly done huge amounts of research into the history and background of her settings and characters, and it shows.

The story uses a clever device to explain how we are able to follow Orsola Rosso and her family through the centuries. I always love a timeshift novel, and this was really beautifully handled - time moves differently on the island of Murano. This allows us to travel through notable periods in history, keeping step with a growing cast of characters with the Rosso family members at the centre. Truly inspired!

Having been - for a few years a while ago - a maker of glass beads myself, I really enjoyed reading about how the process was done in the past, and also the huge amount of detail describing other forms of glasswork. I was sorry to reach the end of the book if I'm honest, and would love it if there were other stories about this family.

Looking forward to reading more by Tracy Chevalier!

Recommended if you like your historical novels with timeshifts!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

Classic Tracy Chevalier.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Orsola is the daughter of a glassmaker in Murano. Glassmaking is men's work, and women are expected to know their place and keep the home running, but Orsola wants to learn the art. She meets one woman who has made her way in this man's world and learns the skills from her.
The story travels through time with Orsola, starting in the 15th century. Chevalier plays with time, using the device of a stone skipping across a lake, stopping at different time periods when the world has moved on, but Orsola and her family have aged only slightly. World events, such as the great plague, the First World War and even Covid are experienced by Orsola.
Fantastic detail about glassmaking, and a compelling narrative, together with descriptions of Venice and Murano, make this a really good read.

Orsolo Rosso lives on Murano, part of a glass making family. Starting in the 15th century, this story follows her life as she learns her own style of glass making to help keep the family afloat.
Whilst the story of Orsolo moves gently on, the background time jumps ahead in leaps and bounds, ending in the present time. This is an interesting technique that contrasts the everyday routine and hardships of the family with the major events affecting Venice and the world at large.
This book was a gentle read. I found the beginning of the book quite slow to get going. There was clearly a lot of research done into glass making but this was overly described at times. The pace of the story was a bit stop and start. It felt a bit stuttering as each leap in world time was made.
Overall it was reasonably enjoyable but her other books are better.

It’s another gem from Ms Chevalier!

As you come to expect from her books you are not only transported to a time and place, but completely immersed into the lives of her characters. We follow Orsola Rosso, a Muranaise glass bead maker. The fact that it is so unusual for women of the time to be allowed and accepted in the world of Murano glass making is no accident as it is Orsola’s strength determination and stoicism that dictates the story we follow. As each chapter in he life concludes we are taken via the analogy of a stone skipping over water to another time and whilst our protagonist ages naturally, the backdrop of Venice and its islands skip through decades and centuries. I found this concept hard to grasp initially but once I realised what was happening, embraced it and became eager to see how Orsola would adapt to an ever changing world. Most of the female characters are strong, made all the more obvious by the accurate descriptions of the male dominated world they revolve in.

As usual, the attention to detail is unsurpassed and you really have to credit Chevalier with being one of the best fiction researchers around today. I find her use of the English language to be ideal for a book to be enjoyed and not just studied, it is accessible and yet so descriptive, without becoming bogged down in unnecessary detail or becoming too verbose.

The story loosely follows a lost love and the fallout from it but it is so much more than a romance. It details the intricate workings both physical and political of the world of glassmaking and yet is so much more than simply a history book. It describes Venice through the ages but is more than a travel guide (although I can guarantee you’ll be thinking about a trip there soon!).

Not sure if you’re interested in glassmaking? Give it a go, you’ll be surprised!

How long until the next one? 😂

The Glassmaker is a truly astonishing work of historical fiction. Tracy Chevalier is a gifted writer with an incredible eye for detail and in this book, as in others, she has brought a specific and little known skill to life in an ingenious way. Centred around glassmaking, Orsola makes glass beads. I was fascinated by the process and it adds an amazing factual perspective to glimpses through time as the beads skip over some six centuries. Retaining a simple singular viewpoint, the story weaves around other important events and their impact including plague, Napoleon, the First World War and Covid. It’s a clever and imaginative literary device and works seamlessly here.

Chevalier is adept at bringing things to life, be it places or people. I felt I was in Venice when it was a trading centre of the world some five hundred years ago. There’s a vibrancy and elegance to her writing which never seems laboured and her characters are so real. Without doubt, she’s one of the greatest living authors and this is destined to be a best seller. Simply outstanding and totally immersive.

Lots of interesting facts about the historic glassmaking methods on the island of Murano, told through the eyes of the young Orsola Rosso. Tracy Chevalier uses an unusual way of moving the story through the centuries which increasingly becomes a harder premise to believe until it becomes very irritating. One of the eras covered included the plagues that ravaged Europe and yes the story reaches the present day and the obligatory comparing and contrasting with Covid.
I’m left with very mixed emotions about this book.

The Rossos are a family of glassmakers in 15th century Murano. Orsola, the daughter of the family yearns to be a glassmaker herself in the male dominated world and is inspired by the one woman glassworker on the island to teach herself to make decorative beads, at which she comes to excel. The story skips from century to century towards the present, as the family has to deal with accidental death, plague, competition from abroad and war. Across time the family dynamics are central but there are important and shifting trading partners to deal with. Beautifully written and utterly compelling, its a must read.

A new Tracy Chevalier novel is always welcome in this house. In this one we have the story of the island of Murano and its place in the history of glassmaking. The story is told over several centuries and through the eyes of Orsola, a member of a glassmaking family who starts making glass beads to help her family after the tragic death of her father.

I loved this book. The descriptions of Murano and Venice through the ages are so vivid that you can see and smell the city as though you were there. Chevalier also goes into great detail about how glass is made and I now really regret my decision not to visit Murano during my two visits to Venice.

I wasn't sure about the time travel aspect of the book. I tend to like my fiction to have its feet firmly in reality (though there are exceptions of course). This book turned out to be one of them. The idea of time being fluid just as glass is worked well in my opinion and I had no problem at all in believing in Orsola and her companions not ageing at the same rate as the rest of the world.

I have to mention the cover as well. It's made to look like pieces of glass with the most stunning font for the title and author name. I love it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Borough Press for the ARC of this remarkable book.

Tracy Chevalier books are always reliably good and interesting - what a jewel of a writer she is. I loved her last book about bell ringing and needlepoint and experts at their craft once agin feature in this new novel about Murano Glassmaking near Venice. The conceit here is that we follow Orsola (and her friends and family) from the Renaissance through to the current day as they age differently to real ife, so we see how the history of glassmaking and its fortunes changes over the centuries at specific points in time - so perhaps 200 years in time will pass but Orsola and her family and colleagues will have only aged say 9 years. This allows Chevalier to explore the heyday of Murano glass making when Murano could only be reached by boat from Venice and anyone involved in the glass making could never leave and take the secrets of production with them on pain of being traced and assassinated, through to hard times during the plague, growing competition and tarrifs form Eastern and other European countries. A decline into surviving thorugh producing whimsical tourist trinkets and our own most recent "plague." It also allows us to see how Orsola navigates her relationships and adapts to changing times and how she herself grows older.

I looked forward each day to catching up with Orsola whilst reading the book. A good read.

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

Love , love, love books by this author and until now her previous title A Single Thread was my favourite from her. That is until now , another brilliant read with characters you feel you would have for friends had you been around them.

The Glassmaker is an outstanding historical novel told in a really unusual and unique way.

The novel covers 500 years, starting in the 1400s and ending just after the covid pandemic. We follow Orsola, the daughter of a maestro glassmaker based in Murano near Venice. The passage of time and the ageing of Orsola and her family do not happen at the same rate. Time skips forward alongside the imagery of a stone being skimmed on the water. But Orsola ages much more slowly and is only in her sixties at the end of the novel. The first time this happens, I was a bit confused but you find the rhythm of the book I accepted that actually this was a clever way of staying focussed on the same set of characters whilst understanding the historical changes of the place around them. Some of the history is explained in detail for instance how the family cope during the plague and other historical events pass by in a flash. I enjoyed the paragraphs where the history of many years was summarised briefly. It was very interesting to consider the changes one family endured, which would normally have played out across many generations.

I loved this book. It is a family saga set against a backdrop of how a traditional craft fares against an ever changing world, told in a really unique way. Recommended to anyone who enjoys a historical novel. I couldn't rate it as anything other than 5 star because I enjoyed it so much!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier

A captivating story that follows an Italian glassmaking family through 300 years of tragedy and triumphs.
Through the eyes and experiences of Orsola Rossa life in and around Murano and Venice is brought to life- the patriarchal system relegated her to a life of servitude and menial household tasks but Orsola is determined to contribute to the family by learning to make glass beads- something that her glass making father and brothers would not demean themselves to do. Family fortunes suffer when her father is killed by a shard of glass and the eldest brother becomes the Maestro . His greed and selfishness nearly destroys the family business with politics and pestilence threatening to diminish the family even more.
Orsola's first love is Antonio who is forced to leave Murano but she never forgets him and the regular appearance of special glass dolphins keeps his memory alive.
The journey through the years takes the reader back as Orsola survives from 1600s to the present day- the author using the metaphor of stone skimming to skip through the years - a device that takes a while to grapple with, but as we travel through history- plague, floods, deaths and wars and follow the fortunes and misfortunes of Venetian glassmakers the reader is captivated by the detailed world and vivid lives described.
An engrossing read that I was genuinely sad to finish.

This is the story of Orsola Rosso, daughter of a glassmaker’s dynasty in Murano, starting in 1486 when she is 8 years old. We meet Orsola (and the people she cares about) again and again over the next five centuries - they seem to only be slowly ageing in a time bubble that seems to be singular to Venice. At first I was not sure what this time-travelling would bring to the table, but, wow, it does work!
Chevalier still masters that breathtaking sense-of-scene that she so excels at. The sights and sounds of Venice and Murano and the lagoon, the wealth and poverty, loves and losses, glass furnaces and bawdy inns, the calle and canals will transport the reader into this colourful world.
A passionate declaration of love to Venice!

A fascinating book. I have recently visited a Bavarian glassmaking centre so could appreciate much of the description of design and process and its authenticity based on the author's very extensive research. But I wasn't quite as gripped by the Russo family saga as I had hoped to be and found the conceit of stretching time a bit irritating, although it did allow for a satisfying ending. For me the characters were somewhat two dimensional and plot driven. If I hadn’t been interested in glassmaking and very fond of Venice I would have been very disappointed as I have much enjoyed her previous books,
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Tracy Chevalier transports us to Venice, specifically the island of Murano. It’s 1486, the height of the Italian Renaissance and the novel introduces us to Orsola Rosso at the age of nine, her family are glassmakers whose greatest rivals are the Barovier’s who are at the forefront of new glass designs. In 1494 disaster strikes the Rosso’s when Lorenzo, the patriarch, is killed in a work room incident and the business faces ruin.
With advice from Maria, the Barovier matriarch, a change of direction is needed, that of glass beads. Beads that Orsola can make and what’s more, they’re currently in demand and so she learns the art.The novel follows Orsola, her family and glassmaking through time. Will the Rosso family, especially the volatile brother Marco, ever give Orsola the credit she deserves?

Venice, Murano, glassmaking and the skill of Tracy Chevalier, I think we’re onto a winner.
The author captures the unique atmosphere of Venice and although I’ve been to Murano and indeed own some of its glass, I’ve never thought much about its history which the author makes really interesting as it’s personalised via Orsola and the Rosso family. What happens to glass making mirrors the ups and downs of Venice itself and are witnesses to its changes through time. I enjoy the focus on beads which women such as Orsola have an important role to play.

The most creative aspect of the novel is how the author magically plays with time and gets me to buy into it. The idea of skipping stones, time and those in and on Murano aging differently to terra firma is wonderful and the historical context is excellent. As ever Tracy Chevalier extensively researches and I love the inclusion of real characters such as Giacomo Casanova and Josephine Bonaparte.

Orsola is an interesting and complex character, she is definitely an intriguing personality and I admire her resilience as she endures various losses. I don’t think she resonates as much with me as Violet Speedwell in the novel A Single Thread but her portrayal is none the less excellent. The novel is full of vibrant characters who bring colour to the pages.

The novel is without doubt beautifully written with close attention to historical detail bringing this glass making saga across time alive. There’s some wonderful symbolism scattered throughout, especially of dolphins which I love and that is used so well in the final twist of the storytelling. It’s original, different and transporting which is par for the course with this gifted writer.

What I didn’t like is the regular interspersing of Italian words and phrases. I know some Italian and it is easy to work out the words I don’t know but still, it doesn’t seem necessary to me!

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to HarperCollins, HarperFiction, The Borough Press for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

I usually love a Tracy Chevalier book but this one has me umming and ahhing. I think my first problem was that I thought I had read it before, after a lot of digging I think the book I read was 'The Glassblower of Murano' - nothing special but it had gone over the history of glass, Venice and the plague so I was not learning anything new.

My second issue was the weird time jumps - how can all of those that she love or interact with not age like everyone else, does no one notice? Can she sell the secret to some beauty cream manufacturer - she could provide the lovely glass jars.

My third issue was the ramming home of the plague/COVID similarity. Before I realised that there were going to be time jumps I read the plague section and thought 'yes, I know how you feel, locked in your house, desperate for human interaction'. I mulled upon this and carried on reading. Then when the odd time stuff happened I thought 'I know where you are going with this - COVID'. I then spent the rest of the book waiting for no one's favourite pandemic to bash it's way into the plot. Perhaps it is all too soon, perhaps as a way of dealing with trauma I just don't want to relive COVID, but because of the publishing cycle the miserable virus is featuring in so many books at the moment and all I can glean from them was that it was a pretty miserable time for everyone.