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.

The Glassmaker " by Tracy Chevalier begins in Renaissance Venice, Murano to be precise,  and is a wonderful historical novel of the Rosso family, traditional glassmakers, with  strong female characters  and the charismatic Orsola Rosso at its center,  which I really got into and enjoyed ...until I did not anymore.  

Chevalier chose to tell a story spanning over 500 years,  where she played with time progressing as we know it from history,  but her characters are only aging marginally. Meaning Orsola only ages 8 years wheras in reality 100 yrs have passed. 

 I liked this in the beginning, i loved the characters, the storytelling about glassmaking and its difficulties as a family business through history  but towards the end I felt this was not working anymore, the ending constructed and wobbily in my opinion. Sorry, i loved a lot about this novel but the concept did not work for me.

This novel was as well-written and evocative as I’ve come to expect from Tracy Chevalier. It was easy to immerse myself in the world of historic Murano and its glassmakers, with families running tight-knit workshops passing on skills over long apprenticeships. I liked the character of Orsola Rosso and the other characters who were introduced early on. Chevalier really is a brilliant author of historical fiction, and the research that must have gone into this book is impressive.
Unfortunately, the device of treating the characters as living in a dimension where time passes more slowly didn’t work at all for me. Every time we skipped through time I was jolted out of the story and I felt less engaged with the book. It was a real shame as I enjoyed each section taken separately, but couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to feel convinced by the premise. The characters’ mindsets and attitudes didn’t change in different time periods, and it came to feel like an indulgent way for the author to explore many periods of Venetian history without coming up with new characters who fit into those times and thought like people of those times. I felt it could have worked better and been more interesting if we’d skipped forward to a different generation of the same family and then come to know them and the challenges their time period presented. For this reason, it was a 3.5 star read for me.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another wonderful, vividly imagined world from Tracy Chevalier. The descriptions really take you back in time to 16th century ( and onwards) Murano and the glassmakers living there.

I really enjoyed the idea of a gutsy girl learning how to make glass objects in order to keep the family business going.
All the characters in this story were convincing, rounded people and Venice itself was beautifully described through the many changes.
The Historic settings were fascinating as the author charted the progression of trade, of Murano as a centre for glassware, of the unique nature of Venice itself and of course, the family around which the plot has its heart.
I really felt connected to the characters and the places.
I absolutely loved this book from the love affair with glass to the romance of the central character. I was so involved I cried at the ending and wrote my own happy version.

A book that stays with you and for me, when I visit Murano next month, I know it will be familiar to me as if I'd lived there myself.
Thank you Tracy for a treat of a book.

And thanks to netgalley too.

Tracy Chevalier's prose is undoubtedly some of the most beautiful I've read. She has a light touch but can transport you to anywhere in the world. This time we go to the home of glassmaking - Murano.

Our heroine is Orsola Rosso whose family are glassmakers on the famous island and the story follows her life but in a somewhat unconventional way. As Orsola and her kin age slowly in Murano the rest of the world take leaps and bounds. Hence what we get is a beautiful mix of the story of a woman's life along with the history of glassmaking, trade and outside influences (war, plague, Covid, tourism, global warming) all mixed in.

I'm making it sound complicated. It's not.

We start with Orsola as a girl in 1486 and follow a normal timeline until 1494. A new chapter begins (and Chevalier uses the clever metaphor of time as a stone being skimmed across water to denote a skip forward in world time) in 1574 but Orsola has only aged a year or two.

I loved this idea of the rest of the world rushing ahead but Venice and it's islands being subject to its own rules of time. It gives Orsola a much greater range of experiences and gives us a chance to see the effect of the passage if time on a small community. Very, very clever and very effective. Bravo.

Then there's the prose - so lush. I could almost feel the glass between my fingers and the colours in front of my eyes. Everything is treated delicately but Chevalier never fails to get her point across.

There are serious issues raised in this book but they too are sensitively dealt with.

I loved everything about this book. Just beautiful. Very highly recommended. I'd love to see someone bring it to life on the screen but they'd no doubt not do justice to Chevalier's words.

Thankyou very much to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

I loved this. Tracy Chevalier has such a way with words and her historical fiction is the best. Over 500 years this story takes us through a little island in Venice that has its own time. Beginning with Orsola who is not allowed to work because she is a woman yet tries to keep her family afloat making glass beads a fascinating breathtaking read

Unusual and interesting.
The history of glassmaking on Murano is told as seen through the eyes of one woman and her family by a time-slip process over five hundred years.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This story is of a Murano Glass family, where thanks to a touch of magical realism, time moves more slowly than for the rest of the world. It tells of the trials and tribulations of the Rosso family through the ages, from the time before the plague reached Venice to the current day. Just like the glass they create, time flows more slowly and the family and everyone on the island age just 60 years while those on Terra Firma go through over 500.

Orsola Rosso is the main character and we start the story in the 1400s when she is just 9. Her family make glass, as does most of Murano, and Venice is a bustling hub of trade. Over the years we see the family change and adapt to deaths, births, marriages and hard times.

It’s a beautiful and gentle tale, although dark times obviously repeatedly hit the family as they deal with the arrival or the Black Death in Europe all the way through to WWI and WWII, and onwards to Covid times. But for most of the book, she pines for her lost love who left for Terra Firma long ago. It will make you want to visit Venice and go buy millefiori beads just to feel connected to the place again.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I really adored this book which is another triumph for Tracey Chevalier. Her sumptuous prose really brought to life the world of Murano and its inhabitants as they create their famous glass. The heroine, Orsola, was a captivating character and the scope of the novel was ambitious. The book was also informative without being heavy. A wonderful book. Thank you to the author, the publisher and to Netgalley.

An amazing book, spanning centuries of life in the Venice area and particularly, Murano. I have been lucky enough to visit these places and the descriptions by the author just bought it all back to me, even though it was quite some time ago. The glass industry on Murano is quite something - when I mentioned this book to my daughter, she immediately recalled the small glass animals she picked up when we were there, even though she was only about 10 at the time. I know these would probably have been thought of as "tacky souvenirs" by Orsola and her family, who are true artists, but to our family, they are a wonderful reminder of a special place.
The story centres around Orsola, her family and their home, which includes their glass making business. You go through many highs and lows with them and learn so much about the industry - as someone who enjoys various crafts, I loved this.. You also learn so much about the history of Venice and what it has gone through over the centuries. It certainly made me want to visit the place again.
As for the time skipping, I have to say it confused me. I have read other reviews - some seem to get it and appreciate it, others, like myself, didn't quite understand. I simply chose to almost ignore that and appreciate a great story, even if Orsola and her family stood still whilst the world moved on by 600 years over the course of the book! I wouldn't let this put you off reading this fab book - and you might "get it" better than I did! Highly recommended anyway.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review, which is what I have given.