Fictional Time Machine Book Group: Current Selection

Call or email Eileen in Adult Services for more information or any questions!
edennis.hav@rcls.org
845-786-3800 extension 23 (feel free to leave a voicemail if I'm not at my desk!)

All upcoming meetings are held from 7pm to 8pm in person (the Board Room on the lower level of HKDPL) or on Zoom.
Zoom links will be sent to the email you used to register, along with an advisory on that month's themed snack, the morning of the meeting.

January 6, 2025

February 3, 2025

March 3, 2025 and so on.

Tracy Chevalier

She was born in Washington, DC but has lived in England all her adult life. She has a BA in English from Oberlin College and an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a reference book editor for several years.
 

Other novels include: Girl with a Pearl Earring, At the Edge of the Orchard, Falling Angels, The Lady and the Unicorn, and Remarkable Creatures.

Author's Amazon Storefront

Author's Instagram

1. Time flows differently in The Glassmaker’s Venice. Characters skip across centuries while aging only a few years at a time. They live through several eras and major historical events, including a plague, two world wars and a global pandemic. Why do you think the author chose to tell the story of Orsola and the Rosso family in this way? What did you think of this decision?

2. Early on in the novel, Maria Barovier tells Orsola, “Beads fill the spaces between things.... They are inconsequential, and women can make them because of that.” Did you agree with the reasoning behind Maria’s statement? Consider the shifting roles of women and beadmaking in the Rosso family business over time. At what point did you feel that Orsola’s beads became “consequential?”

3. Orsola finds a steady companion in Domenego, the African gondolier who serves Gottfried Klingenberg, her family’s longtime trade partner. What do you think was the significance of including his character in Orsola’s story? What did he reveal about the world of The Glassmaker that the Rosso family could not?

4. Orsola laments, “The Rosso family is falling apart,” to which Stella replies, “No, it’s not, it’s just changing.” With whose outlook do you feel more aligned? What do you think is the distinction between a family simply changing as opposed to falling apart? 

5. The story is told in close third person, looking over Orsola’s shoulder. There is a big emphasis on her relationships with people: family, friends, the community, business. Which do you feel is the most important relationship in the book and why?

The Glassmaker, written by Tracy Chevalier
Published by Viking, June 18, 2024
409 pages

This month, the themed snack will be:

Blown glass candy! Or potentially, jolly ranchers, if it doesn't go well.

Here is the tutorial that will be used.

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.

“Impressive . . . Between fascinating descriptions of artisans at work and the glassware they create, Chevalier embeds a love story that transcends time as Orsola, across 500 years, holds on to the love she carries for a man she knew in her youth. With colorful narrative and dialogue, Chevalier lets time roll forward through independent women who are determined to shape glass into works of art and frame life paths of their own design. History flows like molten glass in this stunning novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Travel across seven centuries with novelist Tracy Chevalier and a remarkable Glassmaker ... The Glassmaker conveys a vivid history lesson about a fascinating place and industry, animated through the lives and emotions of compelling characters.”
—Star Tribune

“[A] time-skipping Venetian tour de force ... The sparing intensity to her scene-setting, her vital lightness of touch, her ability to show that historical fiction, at its strongest, always tells a story of the present as well as the past—t​hese are qualities born of the kind of painstaking practice that requires not just talent but something every bit as amorphous as molten glass: time.”
—The Guardian

“There is an immediate richness to the historical fiction of Tracy Chevalier, one that goes beyond carefully researched details and evocative prose, and into deep emotion. . . . The Glassmaker becomes a study not just of history, but of what endures history. That makes it a potent, bewitching bright spot in a stellar career.”
—Bookpage (starred)