This is the latest novel by the much loved writer of 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' and almost a dozen other vivid and compelling works of historical fiction, introducing us to real and imagined lives around the poet William Blake, the paleontologist Mary Anning, seamstresses at Salisbury Cathedral and much, much more. This time she is investigating the lives of glassmakers in Venice through the centuries. 

We're on the island of Murano in the fifteenth century and women aren't supposed to work with glass. But Orsalo Rossi is supremely talented and decides to defy convention when her family's business is threatened. 

Under a cloak of secrecy she seeks to learn and perfect her skill to be able to sell her beautiful beads in Venice and throughout Europe, objects which will be desired by the rich and royalty. 

This work is refined through the generations and, in an inventive and magical depiction of the life of glassmakers through the centuries, Tracy Chevalier has created an original and magical story. She shows us a city and a family experiencing war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

It took me a little while to appreciate what was happening to Orsalo and her family story, but ultimately I enjoyed the ingenuity of this unusual but atmospheric story. And it's always wonderful to read about life in Venice!