October 2024: The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier – MURANO/VENICE

8th October 2024

#audiobook – beautifully narrated by Juliet Aubrey.

This is such a uniquely structured novel. offering a potted overview of the history of Venice, highlighting Murano.

The author has used a very interesting construct by making Venice the main character (which, of course, is wonderful for #tripfiction). The story starts in the later 1400s and comes to its conclusion more or less in the present when Covid strikes. The human interest is provided by the Rosso family and specifically Orsola Rosso, who is born into a glass making family on Murano.

The creative device of skimming stones is used to nudge the story along and over several segments we are treated to Orsola’s story, as time skims forward and hops through the centuries. The stone capriciously transports the reader to a new era.

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Orsola grows a little older each time, as the centuries fly by, but she is the anchor around which the story of Venice unfolds. Venice, of course, has the reputation for being otherworldly at times, and time, here, is unique to the city and in particularly Murano. Terra Firma, the land beyond the lagoon has a more conventional relationship with the ticking of clock. Strange set-up (it is fiction, after all)? It is, but it works very well.

The story starts back in the later 15th Century as the Rosso family establishes a reputation for glass making. Orsola has a desire to make her own mark – at the very least to help build the family coffers – but the guilds do not allow women to work with glass. She finds another woman to mentor her and she takes up the craft of bead making which she can do with a lamp and tallow and soon she has established a market for her pieces through a German trader, who has an established business in Venice.

As the years move on, we witness Venice through periods of plague, the advent of the Austrians (who preferred their Venice without canals and therefore filled in several), Napoleon and then the arrival from terra firma of the railways. Industrialisation and motorisation saw the need for the gondola, as a means of actual transport, recede. Today, of course, the gondola caters largely to tourists.

Coming into the present day, Orsola observes the fundamental change of the city and the phenomenon of the tourist circus that can grate with so many, the huge numbers of people visiting starkly overwhelming the local inhabitants and running the gauntlet of Disneyfication. The advent of the large cruise ships that have dominated the skyline for many years and the import of Chinese glass to undermine the local artisanal industry – all these factors force adaptation and change. This is, in essence, a city fighting for its life on a new front.

The Glassmaker is a beautifully told story that is informative and full of colour and life. A real tribute to La Serenissima and the people who have lived there and who have made the city what it is. Very highly recommended.