The Glassmakers begins in Venice in 1468 and follows the story of Orsola Rosso, the daughter of a glassmaker in Murano. When the family is hit by tragedy, Orsolo starts making glass beads to save them from poverty. She has to work in secret as women are not allowed to work in glass. Through the mechanism of “Venice time” we follow Orsola and her family through centuries. It was fascinating to follow the story of Venice and glassmaking against a backdrop of famous historical figures and events. There was also a love story running throughout. I found the concept of Venice time confusing at first and couldn’t stop wondering how far it extended and who was or wasn’t affected. This did detract from my enjoyment a little but overall I enjoyed the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for this review copy.

Time stands still in one thread of this very fascinating and so romantic story.
Glass making in Murano traditionally belongs to the men. Orsola Rosso desires to learn these skills for herself, and when she meets Maria Barovier, a skilled glass maker in her own right, she knows that she can be taught to make glass beads and earn money from her work.
The book starts in 1486, Renaissance Venice is the centre of the World. It concludes with the COVID pandemic. During these centuries, Orsola and her family are timeless, their skills are passed down through the family firm, new members are added, husbands, wives and numerous children too, but they are protected from the sufferings experienced by the outside world, their life seems to be run on a very different time zone. Venice and Murano stay in their own time.
It’s a magical way to tell a story. This is Tracy Chevalier at her teasing and historical best. There is love, duty, Romance, honour, family loyalty and disappointment in love, and time travel, all these elements combine in this absolute treasure of a book. It is enchanting and spellbinding, strong female characters, and so many historical facts about the skill of glass making, you get a real appreciation of the passion that sustains such an industry. This story just drags you into fifteenth century Venice and you don’t want to ever leave. Brings a tear to the eyes and a sniffle to the nose, it’s just wonderful.
A five star read. I have already recommended this to my local book group and to a friend who is travelling to Venice and Murano next year.
My thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins UK, the publishers, for my advanced copy, freely given in exchange for my honest review. I will leave reviews to Goodreads and Amazon UK, upon publication.

A beautiful, intricately woven story that is so believable you think you were there through all the time shifts and experiencing the long life of Orsola Rosso and her friends and family. Venice and Murano star through the ages, and offer a deep interpretation of lives lived through significant events of war and heartbreak. Wonderful, captivating and leaving you wanting more.

The Glassmaker is absolutely one of my favourite reads of the year so far - I was so swept up in the very clever narrative design, the amazing story and the brilliant characters.

Set in Venice over 500 years, it follows Orsola Rosso as she learns the glassmaking business. We follow just her life but the clever narrative means that as her life moves through at a usual pace, the years around her accelerate more quickly so her lifespan of 80 or so years actually covers 500 years of time. This means that we see how the Murano glass trade changed from it’s first invention to modern day work. It took a few chapters to fully understand how the structure of the book worked but once I did I appreciated how clever it was. Watching such a long period through the eyes of a family you have come to know so well was brilliantly done and felt totally believable.

I loved Orsola Rosso as a character - she was brave and feisty and so loyal to her family. The characters around her were no less fascinating; a huge group of in-laws, nieces and nephews showed so many aspects of such a long period of time and how relationships and alliances shaped the direction of a family business.

I really can’t recommend this enough - it’s a brilliant, clever novel that is researched in so much detail and so thoughtfully written. I found myself looking up things to do with the history and geography of Venice (this is absolutely a love letter to the city) and Murano glass.

Definitely one to pick up!

The book follows Orsola Rosso from a young woman in 1486 to the present day when she is 70, The family are glass blowers and women are not expected to do this work in 1486, but she makes glass beads secretly to make a small income to help her family survive. A brilliant read but quite a few characters, however, that did not spoil the book for me it added different dimensions....
A highly recommended read and fascinating facts about Venitian glass

This was another piece of stunning storytelling from Tracey Chevalier! 'The Glassmaker' serves as a piece of social history tracing the changes of fortune of glassmakers on the island of Murano over the course of 500 years. I became really intrigued at the shape of this novel because Chevalier uses the motif of a stone skimming through time to jump years at a time, whilst we follow the fortunes of just one family. So the book follows the life of Orsola Rosso, who starts as a little girl and ends as an old woman - though the greater time setting is over 500 years!

The setting and description are glorious - both Venice and Murano are intricately depicted - making them almost characters in their own right. I have never visited either and have always been keen, but Chevalier's writing has made me hungry to go and see these beautiful places as soon as possible. I cared about her characters and what happened to them. There are a lot of people to keen track of in this book as the family grows and extends naturally. You feel like you live every moment of their lives with them.

The ending in poignant and unexpected, and will definitely keep me pondering for a long time. I cannot recommend this book enough - from the first shove in the canal, I was entranced by Orsola and the fortunes of her family. The historical changes and the adaptations of the glass-making studio to keep reinventing itself to survive felt real and carefully researched. This book as so much to offer its reader - get a copy as soon as you can - you won't be disappointed!

To get the chance to read and review the newest Tracy Chevalier book was beyond exciting. For the timing to coincide with a holiday so that I could read it in two days, was a total treat.
When I say that it didn’t disappoint, I am being very coy about a book that blew me away. And yes, it is true - I may have ignored my own family to spend time with Osala and her family in Murano.
In her authors notes, Chevalier says that she was worried about pulling off a novel that plays with time. The Rosso family only age a few years as time outside of Venice gallops through the centuries. I barely had to suspend my disbelief - as I thought it worked perfectly and it made total sense.
I do not hesitate for a moment to recommend this beautiful book, especially for book clubs who will have so much to talk about. If you like a historical novel which has been well researched and has characters that will touch your heart, this is for you. I absolutely loved it.

This is the story of Orsola Rosso, the daughter of a well respected glass making family on the island of Murano. The book takes Orsola's life span and maps it across five hundred years of history. As time outside Murano passes, Orsola's life moves more slowly. We start the book in 1486 when Orsola is a young woman and we finish it in the present day when Orsola is only just in her Seventies. Each chapter of the book begins with the difference in external time and Orsola's life and the explanation that time moves differently on Murano, like the glass they make there. This magical realist segment is the only piece of the book I really struggled with. It's such a central conceit of the novel but there are a lot of blips where external characters and internal characters intersect or where history intervenes where the joins are smoothed over in a way that left me with a lot of questions. I don't think most readers will mind that. Chevalier is a good writer who excels at historical fiction and her characters are well written and inventive. The reader will forgive a lot for that. Well researched and super interesting about the history of glass making.

I have always been a fan of Tracy Chevalier's work and loved the premise of this book. I did think however that there were too many characters, and the complexity was beyond what I have come to expect from her work. That said, it was a highly descriptive and evocative read and transported me to Venice!



Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the opportunity to review this book.

I found myself left frustrated + confused by this, there are a multitude of characters who never seem to age even though the timeline is literal centuries, I just didn’t get it. Even though I enjoyed the setting I lost interest midway through and if it wasn’t the fact this was an ARC I would have DNF’d.

★★
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I want to thank NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the opportunity to review this book.

Tracy Chevalier is a wonderful writer, and has written an extraordinary magical story which totally blew me away. A brilliant idea, skilfully executed. A story which spans from 1486 to the current day, but the family and close friends in the story age very very slowly. Like a stone skipping across a pond, we follow the family across the years. Absolutely genius.

Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a Murano glassblowing family. When her father dies, his children all have to step up, and Orsola starts making glass beads in secret to help the family – as women didn’t really work at that time. We follow Orsola and her brothers, and their children and grandchildren – and all of their friends – down the years, From the great plague to current day Covid, the glassmakers of Murano have to survive them all.

Absolute genius. A fascinating book, with believable characters and full of historical facts and famous figures. I couldn’t put it down.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6788285511
https://maddybooksblog.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-glassmaker-by-tracy-chevalier-tracy.html

“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.