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.

A fascinating setting for the book with lots of information on Murano glassmaking and Italian life. I enjoyed the way it moved through the centuries and we learned about how lives changed with the times. I wasn't too sure in the characters though, the flow and authenticity of other works by Chevalier just wasn't there for me.

Love and life at different times on the islands of Murano and Venice. Feisty Orsola is the heroine, determined to make a living through glass. A time-slip novel, the same main characters living their lives working with glass through many centuries. Surprisingly it works, deft touches by the author making the narrative flow through thick and thin.

Tracy Chevalier is hit-and-miss for me, but I think she's at her best when writing straightforward historical fiction that is immersed in the details of craftmaking, whether that's Vermeer's use of the camera obscura to paint light in seventeenth-century Delft or women embroidering kneelers for a cathedral in inter-war Britain. All my favourite Chevalier novels fall into this category: Girl With A Pearl Earring, The Lady and the Unicorn, The Virgin Blue, A Single Thread. And The Glassmaker could absolutely have been another Chevalier classic, but it's outrun a bit by its own ambition. It starts very well. Orsola is part of a glassmaking family on Murano in the late fifteenth century. After her father's death, she learns to make beads to supplement the family income, and negotiates business with her difficult brother, as well as meeting an ambitious, handsome Venetian fisherman. But Chevalier doesn't want to write a plain historical novel this time. The Glassmaker skips forward through the centuries, preserving its central cast intact - so Orsola can reflect on being quarantined for the plague in sixteenth-century Murano while she observes the Covid-19 lockdown, or see an ancient blue wedding cup in a glass museum made around the time she was born.

I don't think this was an inherently bad idea, and it leads to some unexpectedly poignant moments - an enslaved gondolier from Ghana who was taken from his village in the early modern period finally returning to trace his heritage in the present day, for example, condensing traumatic centuries of history into a single life. But it is continuously frustrating that the passing of time doesn't change the central characters one bit, and yet we aren't meant to see them as totally out of kilter with their surroundings. They're not a family of vampires who can't keep up with social mores - but there's no hint that the new versions of themselves might have been shaped by the very different worlds in which they live. The novel pays closer attention to how gondoliers' uniforms change over time than how mindsets do. The time-hopping also unfortunately gives Chevalier the opportunity to info-dump a lot of her research (cf. Remarkable Creatures and Burning Bright) when her novels are always much stronger when she resists this temptation. The Glassmaker starts feeling too long (it's 400+ pages) and didactic, hopping forward just to pick up cameos from people like Casanova. This is a shame, because I found the first half, in particular, genuinely absorbing.

I think Chevalier could have gone one of two ways with this one. Either write a novel set in just one time period (I'd have plumped for either the late medieval opening or the sixteenth-century plague material) or write something more literary that embraces the weirdness of this conceit. The first would have played to her strengths; but the second could have been something really special. So The Glassmaker is good, but also a little frustrating.

I sobbed reading this, so carried away was I by Tracy’s retelling of life in Venice and Murano from the 15th century onwards. While Venice gets a lot of praise, it’s Murano were the glassmakers really learn their craft. Though women are not meant to work, Orsola Rosso wants to live a different life: and one that is profitable for her family, learning how to make glass beads to bring in some much needed money. Readers will take Orsola to their hearts as she continues to perfect her craft through war, plague, love and loss and the centuries. Gradually, her reputation grows, as does her understanding of the world when it comes to relationships. It feels like a whirlwind of history in a few hundred pages, and it’s beautifully done, with characters so vivid and creations so captivating that you’ll feel you can reach out and touch them. By far one of my favourite 2024 books.

3.5* rounded up to 4.
I’ve read and enjoyed several of Tracy Chevalier’s novels, and this was no exception. Her work is well researched, and she paints portraits of her chosen subject that are detailed, evocative and interesting.
Here she has chosen the subject of glassmaking in Murano, intertwined with the history of Venice, over the course of 500 years.
She follows the fate of the glass-making Rossi family over this time, but in an unusual way- ‘Time runs differently in Venice’. And so this is not a multigenerational tale- less than sixty years pass for the Rosso family and the main characters they are associated with whilst the rest of the world moves from the discovery of the Americas, through plagues and wars to the 2020s.
This is where the story breaks down a bit for me; it goes in a series of ‘time jumps’. Eight years may pass for the Rossos, whilst the world has moved on 40 years, etc.
I got caught up in the mechanics of this; if the Empress Josephine spent a few weeks in Venice, did Napoleon age ten years while she was away? Orsola-the main character-visits the mainland-‘terraferma’- for a few hours, but the same time seems to pass as on Murano; shouldn’t her family have been worried that she had been missing for, say, a week? And the characters are not unaware that this is happening; they accept it as the norm.
But that’s just me. If you can ignore the whys and hows and just accept that this is happening, then it becomes a quirky and interesting twist to a family-saga novel.

The book starts in 1486 Murano, when Venice is an extremely busy trading centre. Murano is a short boat ride from Venice.
Orsolola Rosso is aged nine years old. Her family are one amongst others on the island making Murano glass.
It’s in their blood.
Orsolo wants to learn to make glass beads, she’s ambitious.

The book moves through chapters and eras of history from 1486 until 2022.
I didn’t understand the meaning of the skimming of the stone over water until almost the end, but did figure it meant it had changed into a different time zone.
Some parts of the book really captured me, life on Murano, visiting Venice, the descriptions, sights, sounds and smells, but it was the same family and some friends who were featured in all the different time eras, apart from the few that didn’t survive life. That felt a bit complicated for me.
I didn’t warm to Orsola’s character and found her self obsessed.
I think I understand what the author was wanting from her book, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

This book starts during the Renaissance, in Murano, a short distance from Venice, renowned for its beautiful and exquisite Murano glass. At the time, glassblowers were traditionally all men and women are forbidden to work with glass. Orsola breaks down those barriers and traditions that prevent her from working with glass. She learns the art of beadwork and from the sale of these beads she manages to save her family during plagues and turbulent times.

I love the way this historical fiction is rich in magical realism which is masterfully woven throughout the book, while the characters age through the years not centuries. The book spans centuries from the Renaissance in 1486 through to more recent world events, the COVID 19 pandemic.

Tracy Chevalier writes excellent historical fiction. In this instance she has written about the men and women (mostly) associated with glass making in Murano. You can tell that she has done a lot of research and this is reflected in the book but not told in a 'preachy' way. It was the excellent use of a timeline throughout the story that had me hooked from the beginning. Time moved on but the lives of the people in the story continued as normal.
Excellent read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the advance copy of this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read which weaves social and political events into a big family story that is told over several generations. There is something unusual with the timeline that I wondered was I missing something, but don’t think I was and it was a clever way of weaving in modern events into what is primarily a historical novel.
The family operate in the glass industry in Murano and Venice and there are large chunks of the story given over to detail on glass making operations.
If you’ve ever travelled to Venice and/or Murano and you enjoy historical fiction, you should definitely give this book a go. I found the detail about the glass industry, historical events, and the logistics of living in Venice/Murano engrossing.
I would have liked to see some pictures of the beads and glasswork, the words describe them so beautifully.
The book is published on the 12 September. I was Gifted a digital ARC from @boroughpress via @netgalley

One of Tracy Chevalier's best books. I really loved the story, the concept, the characters. As we move through the centuries in Venice I felt privileged to follow these people's lives and totally invested in their story and I grew to love them all. And I learnt about glassmaking. Now I just need to visit Venice and Murano.

Looked forward to this as I like her as a writer.
Set somewhat confusingly (I have difficulties with this) within the same family, the same people but covering 400 years during which they only age 70 ish years. I can’t see the point of this, as the historical context has to change and needs to be explained, if you stay in the same period you don’t have to do that.

Starts in medieval times, explaining historical background, characters are well developed, though some, including her brother, are very one dimensional. He especially does not really come to life for me until the end of the book.

It shows the limitations of women’s lives well, with the difficulty of establishing yourself as anything else but mother and wife.

The arrival of the plague sends the comfortable household into crisis, and having lived through a pandemic I found the description of life on Murano during this time very haunting. The writer explores well the human nature during troubled times, where one persons tragedy is another’s opportunity.
Life continues, adaptations have to be made and different time periods require different approaches by the same Characters, who only age a little. Slavery is brought up, but somehow feels rushed and seems dealt with very simplistically. The character is somehow not believable, and seems to enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy over his own time.

The end seems a little rushed, and despite tremendous historical events (WW1 , Napoleonic Invasion) ), they somehow feels very rushed and only skirts around the issues vaguely, making you wonder what is the point. Personally I feel having staid in one historical period would have been better.

A enjoyable read nevertheless, but with ( for me) some issues