indie’s Reviews > The Marriage Portrait > Status Update

this is INCREDIBLE. Maggie O’Farrell rewrites the lives of H8’s wives & Lady Anne from R3 WHEN???

“Iphigenia, with her slit throat, like a vibrant scarf”

“It was hard to distinguish the bars of the cage from the dark, repeating stripes on the creatures fur. The animal was orange, burnished, gold, fire made flesh; she was power and anger, she was vicious and exquisite; she carried on her body, the barred marks of a prison, as if she had been branded for exactly this, as if captivity had been her destiny all along.”

“A lithe, sinuous shape, moving from one side of the cage to the other. The tiger didn’t so much pace as pour herself, as if her very essence was molten, shimmering, like the ooze from a volcano.“

“The cry again! It was not so much a roar, no, which is what Lucrezia had expected: this had a yearning, desperate rasp to it. The sound, Lucrezia thought, of a creature captured against its will, a creature whose desires have all been disregarded.”

“She, alone, heard the tigress’s cry as the cart entered the palazzo gates: a low, hollow call, like wind funnelled through a pipe. It’s severed the night with its mournful pitch – once, twice – before dying away in a hoarse rumble.”