The Glassmaker

ByTracy Chevalier

Release Date: 2024-06-18
Genre: Historical Fiction

Score: 4

From 216 Ratings

Description

Named a Best Historical Novel of 2024 by The Sunday Times, The Independent, and BookPage

“The Glassmaker is as finely wrought as a dazzling Murano bead. . . . Chevalier reaffirms her status as one of the reigning queens of historical fiction.” —The Independent

“This charming fable is at once a love story that skips through six centuries, and also a love song to the timeless craft of glassmaking. Chevalier probes the fierce rivalries and enduring loyalties of Murano's glass dynasties, capturing the roar of the furnace, the sweat on the skin, and the glittering beauty of Venetian glass.” – Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

From the bestselling historical novelist, a rich, transporting story that follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day.

It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass—but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure.

Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is as inventive as it is spellbinding: a mesmerizing portrait of a woman, a family, and a city as everlasting as their glass.

Reviews

Wonderfully done!
5
By Gamer pro 8808
Chevalier recreates Milan through the years, you feel like you’re there.
Glass maker
4
By NoBrainerToMe
Very well researched and enjoyable except the mystical jumping in time. It was very weird and distracting for this reader. Wish the characters had lived and died with generational new characters/ families
Fascinating.
4
By NiagaraMichael
“The Glassmaker” is an interesting romantic fable with wonderful fantastical elements. The story of women living in Venice and working in the world of creative art glass is definitely unique. As historical fiction it has broad sweep of the phases of Venetian life over the centuries. What’s especially unique is that the novel tells a fresh stories about lives about which we really knew very little. I enjoyed the book very much.