“The Glassmaker” is a time travelling work of historical fiction that covers hundreds of years while never moving focus from the experiences of one fictional family. The book is set in Murano and Venice and starts in 1486. Orsola is a small girl from a family of glassmakers. She wants to help the family business, partly because of her love of the craft but also to help her family survive the various trials and tribulations that are thrown at them. However, women aren’t glassmakers and Orsola has to fight not just society but her own family while she hones her skills and tries to make her side of the business a success. While Orsola is learning, the rest of the world is growing older but in the somewhat mystical version of Murano and Venice in this book, time moves differently and people grow older slower. So by the time Orsola is in her late sixties, we have read about slavery, plagues, Casanova, Napoleon, the First and Second World Wars and even the recent COVID-19 pandemic, each of which impacts Orsola and her family in some way. But ultimately, it is Orsola’s major love of glassmaking that drives her choices and her life.

This is a very well written book which you would expect from Tracy Chevalier. It interweaves the fictional characters, their storylines and the historical aspects with expertise. Although you have to suspend your disbelief about time not moving in the same way in that part of Italy, it is easy to do and I loved the stone skimming analogy that runs throughout.

My only real criticism of the book is that I didn’t care as much about some of the characters as I felt I was meant to. I don’t want to say too much more as it will give aspects of the plot away! But what really shone through was a love of Murano and Venice and if I ever visit again (I’ve only ever been briefly once!) I will see it in a whole new light.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

My first permanent job was at a commercial glassmaker and whilst aesthetically different to hand- blown glass, elements around the love of glassmaking really resonated.

However, I think whether or not this book really works for you will be determined by whether or not you can buy into the premise of time skipping forward like a skimmed stone. With the same main characters, Chevalier covers a 500 year period, as though the Rossi family operates at different speed to the rest of the world.

Personally, I found this conceit jarring. If characters are to exist over 5 centuries, you need to have a good reason for it and they still need to develop. Instead, someone who experienced the Black Death experiences Covid in a similar way. There is no personal growth between these points and there is a strange lack of emotion. I think it would have been a stronger book if there had been a plot around a single period.

Im afraid for me, attractive prose didn’t make up for a lack of plot or character development.

Tracey Chevalier, best known for her novel The Girl with the Pearl Earring, takes readers to Venice in her new novel The Glassmaker. Or more precisely to the island of Murano, home to an ancient and world renowned tradition of glass making. This novel is a kaleidoscopic journey through the history of Murano, its glassmaking and of Venice through the centuries.
Chevalier opens The Glassmaker with the idea that time moves differently in Venice and then with a metaphor – of the concept of skimming a stone across a lake:
“…it will touch down many times, in long or short intervals as it lands.
With that image in mind, now replace water with time.”
With this framing, Chevalier sets out the structure of The Glassmaker – a narrative that will “touch down” at various points in Venetian history between the 1490s and the twenty first century. Only it is her other conceit that drives the action of the novel – the idea that the people age at a different rate than the rest of the world (or terraferma as they call the mainland). So that each time the reader touches down, 50, 80 or one hundred years later than the last chapter, they are catching up with the same characters, both in Murano and Venice, aged only by a few years.
Readers’ enjoyment of The Glassmaker will be partly tempered by their ability to accept Chevalier’s framing. In some ways it is clever and in others it makes no sense and has so many logical holes in it that it is hard to stop asking obvious questions around how this all works. In particular, how a whole city that moves slowly in time interacts with the rest of the world. But what it also means is that characters carry the past with them in a way that allows for some interesting resonances. So, for example, those who lived through the Black Death in the sixteenth century also live through the Covid lockdowns.
The plot itself revolves around Orsola Rosso, youngest daughter of the glassmaking Rosso family. When her father dies suddenly Orsola and her brothers need to take over the business. While women are not permitted to blow glass Orsola is trained in the making of glass beads, a skill that she will perfect over the years and which will be partly responsible for keeping the business afloat. Over the centuries, Chevalier’s narrative centres on Orsola and her relationships both personal and business, charting the fortunes of the glass industry along the way.
While shortcutting the readers’ need to re-engage with a new set of characters in each chapter (and probably making the book twice as long), Chevalier’s approach plays down the way in which these skills and traditions have been passed down and closely held over many generations. Her characters become stand ins for the families of each period which reduces readers ability to think of them as real people.
The Glassmaker focusses on a fascinating art form and the generations of families that have kept it alive in the face of competition, war, disease and now rising sea levels. In telling this story, Chevalier also manages to highlight some of the key moments and characters from Venetian history – including the Black Death, the exploits of Cassanova, the Napoleonic wars and World War I. But she also (necessarily) skips her time stone over others – the whole of the twentieth century is dealt with in a paragraph.
The Glassmaker overall feels like a flawed experiment. It is an engaging and enjoyable way to learn about the glassmaking industry of Venice. But the method that is used feels artificial and just thinking about it often gets in the way of enjoying the story that Chevalier is trying to tell.

An interesting journey through time with the glass making family in Murano. A great depth of research had obviously been undertaken to write this in depth tale

I loved this book , it was such an interesting read with a different and original time element. It is set in Venice and we follow a family of glassmakers through time . Different aspects of history are covered like the plague, the First World War, all the way to the present day. We see how Venice changes with time and how glass plays a prominent part. We follow the Rosso family , mainly Orsola Rosso who is a strong woman with determination and strength in a male dominated society. I learned so much about the making of glass in all its different forms. It’s a love story to Venice and its people., its culture and how resilient it is . A wonderful read which I found captivating from start to finish.

I adored this book from the very first page right to the very last. The writing and story is so engaging it just pulls you into a different time and place. The characters just feel so real and charming, I loved them all. I love reading a book when you get the feeling that the author really fell in love with their story too as it just makes it feel that bit more magical and makes you believe too. This book is honestly an amazing piece of historical fiction as it made me fall in love with glass, Murano and Venice. I can feel it calling me now….I just know this story will stay in my heart for some time.

Tracy Chevalier’s novels are compulsory and compulsive reading – each devoted to an art or craft. Exacting and scrupulous research into the glassmaking on Murano and a time-manipulation technique provide the buttress for this ode to Venice and Murano and the fascinating, creative, diverse characters filling each page. It was a delight to read, memorable in so many ways, keenly alive and spirited, full of emotive impact.

This book is responsible for me not getting any writing or housework done over the last few days. It is simply magnificent and a captivating story set in Venice. I loved the way the same compelling characters were portrayed through the ages as Venice and Murano changed. The details of glassmaking and Venetian trading were brilliant and made the book especially interesting. What a wonderful read.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for sending me an advance digital copy of The Glassmaker for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Tracy Chevalier has woven a wonderful story with The Glassmaker, taking the reader on a journey through 500 years of Venetian glassmaking.

Her protagonist, Orsola, is a strong female character. I really admired her resilience as well as her persistence in not only learning to become a glassmaker in a time when women were discouraged from becoming involved in the craft but also in becoming an astute businesswoman in the process. She has a rich and colourful life.

For the purposes of this story, time in Murano and the other Venetian islands moves more slowly, thus allowing Chevalier to take us on a journey through time whilst still keeping the protagonist Orsola, and many of her contemporaries alive. That said, time still moves on where Orsola lives in terms of world events and the changes in technology. Orsola and the other characters are aware of this, and realise they age at a different rate. By the end of the 500 years of the story, Orsola is only in her late sixties.

I found myself unsettled by the idea that time still moved in the sense of world events but Orsola and the main characters aged at a different rate. Imagine coping first hand with 500 years of change in a single lifetime. This was distracting to me and meant I found it hard to really immerse myself in the story. I wish I had been able to suspend disbelief more easily and wrap my head around this. Other reviewers have said that Chevalier’s method of constructing time in this novel was brilliant and that it made the story for them, so I think it will depend on the reader as to whether it sits well with them.

While I did not enjoy this book as much as many of Tracy Chevalier’s previous novels, it is very well written. I would definitely recommend this book with the proviso that you need to have an more open mind in terms of the way that time is handled in the story than I was able to bring to my reading journey.

This book is a lot of things. It is a feminist story, a love story, it takes big environmental and societal changes in its stride and last but not least it is a homage to Venice and Murano, once the European centre of glass making. It spans 500 years and to do so it employs a narrative trick: time alla Veneziana, which is based on the premise that time in Venice runs at a different speed to the rest of the world. According to the narrator, this is because people who are making things – like glass – have an ambiguous relationship with time, they get so absorbed in their craft that time passes without their noticing.

This is how Orsola Rosso, daughter of a well-established glassmaker in Murano, starts making glass beads at the end of the 15th century. She does so against all the odds in a trade traditionally handed down only to the male heirs. Her inspiration is a fellow woman glassmaker. The reader then follows her through the centuries, experiencing with her the the plague, Napoleon Bonaparte conquering Venice, Classicism and Romanticism, the two World Wars and eventually, arriving in today’s world, the effects of globalisation, which made China Murano’s main competitor and has huge cruise ships docking on at Venice harbour. Moreover, climate change accompanied by rising sea levels is causing the floods that will eventually sink Venice.

Embedded in this big sweep of time is Orsola’s personal story, fighting male dominance in glass making, establishing her own craft and never letting go of a deep love that was never meant to be.

It you can suspend disbelief and go with the concept of time alla Veneziana, you will enjoy a fast- paced read, featuring a more than likeable heroine. This however is a big ask given that there is so much packed into too few pages. You will however only know by finding out for yourself, which I would encourage you to do since my reading experience was an entirely enjoyable one.

I am grateful to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Glassmaker
It’s 1486 and 9 year old Orsola Russo has just fallen into a canal. But it’s not an accident as Marco, her older brother, had a hand in it and stands there laughing at her predicament.
They live on the island of glassmakers, Murano, and nearby is Venice, the city of water. It is also the trade centre of Europe and the rest of the world. As Orsola is helped out of the canal to stand dripping wet on its bank, her mother Laura sends her into a rival glassmakers, the Baroviers, to ostensibly dry off but also to have a look round. Murano glass, made by generations of families, is highly prized. Orsola sees Maria Barovier making rosette glass beads from three different colours red, white and blue. Women are not normally part of the glassmaking process but Orsola sees her work and realises that it might be work that she could do when not preoccupied with household chores. After all she could sit in a corner making the beads and not be in anyone’s way.
But disaster strikes the Russos when a piece of glass shatters due to a clumsy workman and a shard flies across the room to lodge in Orsola’s father’s neck killing him instantly. Orsola’s beads soon help to bring money into the house as her mother takes over the running of the workshop. Orsola joins forces with Klingenberg and he gives her a regular order for her glass beads in various colours.
Plague comes to Venice in 1574 and soon spreads to Murano. The Russos are quarantined in their own homes with two family members, Laura and Marco’s wife Nicolette, being sent to the plague hospital on Lazzaretto Vecchio. When the plague passes after having killed a third of Venice’s population, Marco informs Orsola that she is to be married. But not to the love of her life, Antonio Scaramel, but to another glassworker, Stefano. Antonio leaves Murano and Venice forever but every so often a small glass dolphin arrives anonymously….until one day someone brings it in person…
I loved this book as I have visited both Venice and Murano and could picture both locations and sights as the author so vividly described them. However, these days Venice is more likely to be bustling with tourists than traders and workshops. The fortunes of the Russos are set against a backdrop of world events: Napoleon taking over ‘the city of water’ followed by the Austrians replacing him and real life people also feature in the novel. But Casanova and Empress Josephine do not make money for Orsola and the Marchesa Luisa Casati was an interesting choice to feature. They were skilfully woven into the rich tapestry of the Russos and Orsola.
The author played around with time throughout the story in that ‘time alla Veneziana’ or ‘the passage of time’ is ‘like a skipping stone’ and while the world moves on leaving Venice’s rich trading past behind, the people on Murano age differently.
There was enough information about the glass making process and its hierarchy of workers and the manufacture of Orsola’s beads to enable me to easily visualise the processes. Orsola’s work could have been and was viewed by one character as ‘women’s work’ but were in fact integral to the family economy. The author’s research was subtle and she really evoked Venice’s importance as a world trading centre and then it, and Murano’s, decline.
I liked Orsola as she was never defeated although she had disappointments such as with Casanova and Empress Josephine. The arrival of another glass dolphin kept her lost love close to her heart especially in the closing chapters. The cover was great.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

Starting in the 1480’s, this love letter to Venice and Murano, charts the story of Orsola and the Rosso family of glassmakers,navigating life, love, calamity and time itself.

The charm is in the blending of a family saga with the intricate skills required to tame molten glass, set against such beautiful places; timeless but not unaffected by age, history and climate.

Like life itself, the narrative pace can vary, but the lasting tribute is a yearning to revisit Venice where I last went around 45 years ago, shopping for glassware with my parents! It’s been too long.

#docs.reading.room

A superbly written, detailed story of the glass makers of Murano. Weaving together centuries of history to follow Orsola Rosso and her family as they live through the good times and bad faced by Venice and Murano in an unusual way.
The city of Water, its people and islands are all brought beautifully to life.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read The Glassmaker.

I was sent a copy of The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier to read and review by NetGalley. I have always loved Tracy Chevalier’s writing and this novel is no exception. While it doesn’t quite have the visceral quality of Girl with a Pearl Earring, it still made me feel that I wanted to learn how to make glass - beads in particular! Her novels always make we want to take up whichever art or craft that is integral to the story. The book is studded with history, with chapters flying on through the centuries but still remaining with the same cast of characters. I found this to be a really interesting and innovative way of including important periods, and people, in Venice and Murano’s history. Having been fortunate to have visited both places myself 20 years ago I could visualise everything really easily through the author’s words and I still cherish the Murano glass bracelet that I bought on the island. Beautifully written, sensitive and evocative, this is a must read for all Tracy Chevalier fans.

I was asked to review this book ahead of publication by NetGalley. Murano glass was something I was fascinated by having seen at Kew Gardens as sculputres some years ago. Now reading about this in this book.
I have been lucky to recieve 3 of the authors books and so enjoyed them all.

The heroine of this story is Orsalo Rosso, the family are glassmakers on the island. we see her as a girl in the latter part of the 1400s but there is a time travel feel that is quite unique as well. The other star iteself is Venice itself which the author vividly paints a picture of the social changes, beautiful architechture, and political times.

Beautifully written and due to be published September 12th 2024.

I loved this book. Set in Murano and Venice starting in 1486 and spanning 6 centuries but with the same characters throughout. Yes it sounds like it wouldn’t work but it goes and just brilliantly. The story follows the Rosso family, a respected Murano glassmaking family, and in particular Orsola Rosso who dreams of becoming a glassmaker but women don’t work with glass!

Briefly, when times are tough Orsola starts to make glass beads with the help of a female glassmaker from another family, but in secret. Once she hones her craft she starts to sell her beads and helps her family survive through some terrible times. The novel centres on the periods of history that most affected the area from the plague in 1575 to wars and floods and the most recent ‘plague’ COVID. Orsola had a hard life, as most women did in the earlier period of this story, but she fell in love and even when her one true love left her she was reminded of him over the centuries on receiving a small glass dolphin.

I loved the premise that time works differently in Murano, it was all done so seamlessly. Orsola was a wonderful main character, so strong and so resilient through everything that life throws at her. She had a chance of happiness that was snatched away from her but still she did everything she could to help her family. I’ve been to Venice and Murano and the descriptions took me right back there. A wonderfully evocative and compelling read. Up there with my favourite books this year.

This a well-researched book that centres on Orsola Rosso and her family who are Murano glassmakers. It spans many centuries, starting in the 15th century, and covers many important historical events showing how they affected the family and their business. The problem for me was that the story jumped a century but the characters remained virtually the same age or a few years older and although the concept was good, it all became far too confusing.
It is a long book that became a bit tedious, with far too much Italian dialogue and information about glass bead making. Some of the characters were very unlikeable and the ending made me groan when yet another mention of covid came up in a book.
I gave it 3.5 stars because although I didn't love it I also didn't hate it, it was ok. Give it a go, this is just my opinion.

When it comes to historical fiction Tracy Chevalier has an incredible ability to bring the past alive.

In this novel we move across centuries, and in the hands of a less skilled writer this could have left one feeling rather queasy. Not here it was all very smooth.

All the dirty is moored with an Italian family of glass makers in Murano.

We moved across time with fictional and historical people flitting across the arc of the story.

Personally I found the menfolk of the family extremely annoying. It was always the women who were more interesting.

I loved learning about Murano and Murano glass. The integration of the research which must have had to be done was wonderfully deft.

All in all a wonderful historical novel.

In Tracy Chevalier’s The Glassmaker, we follow the life of Orsola Rosso, born into a family of glassmakers on the island of Murano, just across the lagoon from Venice itself. A timeslip device allows the characters’ lives to continue uninterrupted while events from different eras intrude – plague, the decadence of Casanova, French and Austrian occupation, flood and even the recent pandemic. It seems odd at first but allows us to stay with the Rossos, getting to know determined and hardworking Orsola and her family. Ruling over everyone’s lives and emotions is Orsola’s fiery and overbearing (and often unbearable) elder brother Marco. Thank goodness for his wife Monica, a pragmatist who takes no nonsense and provides solutions, talking sense so that Marco can’t object, well not with any justification. Among other characters I liked were Marietta, who shows Orsola kindness rather than the traditional rivalry of someone from a rival glassworking family; privileged and canny Klara; stoic gondolier Domenego.
I’m a tough reader of stories set in Venice; I like the writer to know the city better than I do and love it at least as much. Chevalier clearly does, relating both its obvious charms and details such as food and trade and transport. I appreciated learning some new Venetian swear words too. Perhaps Venice is the only place her stretching of time would work, as its topography and even the majority of the buildings have changed so little over hundreds of years; ‘the wide expanse of water … heaving with boats. The palazzos lining it with their brightly coloured facades and their rows of arched windows’ have remained so that it’s easy to imagine the places Orsola inhabits and visits; it’s a pleasure to spend some time there with her.

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier is a unique and beautifully written book centered around one glass making family and spanning centuries. With strikingly evocative descriptions and compelling and well realised characters it makes for captivating reading. There is a hint of magical realism which could have been jarring in less masterful hands but is so well done here that it really added to my enjoyment of the story.
As is often the case with this author the book centers on a woman who is determined to do and be more than society deems acceptable, in this case Orsola Rosso, who lives with her family on the island of Murano, the home of glassmaking , lying just across the lagoon from the prosperous trade centre of Venice. It is 1486 when the book begins and Orsola is a young girl who flouts convention by learning how to make glass beads despite glasswork being traditionally restricted to men. Her older brother regards it as foolishness but when times get tough it is the beadwork that puts food on the table. Through a clever motif of time being like a stone skipping over a lake and the magical conceit that time passes more slowly on Murano we follow Orsola and her family through plague, war, occupation and up to the current day and Covid with Orsola aging so slowly that she is in her sixties by the end of the book despite the centuries that have passed.
It is clear that much time and research has gone into the book, especially when it comes to the history of Murano glassmaking and the society and culture of Venice through the ages and I felt like I learned a lot while reading , but it was so seamlessly and effortlessly woven into the storytelling that it never felt intrusive. I loved the character of Orsola, her determination and bravery shone through and meant that I was completely invested in her story and the stories of the other resourceful and impressive women of the Rosso family.
This was immersive historical fiction at its finest and I loved every word.
I read an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.