A novel about the glass trade in Murano, Italy, finds magic in characters that age hundreds of years and never die. New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier joins guest host Courtney Collins to discuss her enduring characters who live and work in the decorative glassmaking trade outside Venice, why the author chose to follow one family continuously from the Renaissance to modern life and the beauty found in small moments. Her book is “The Glassmaker.”
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Transcript
Courtney Collins [00:00:00] There’s an island just across the lagoon from Venice, Italy, called Murano. It’s famous for glassmaking. The families who’ve toiled in front of furnaces for generations have created everything from elaborate chandelier is to translucent glass beads. The island, in many ways, is very different now than it was 500 years ago. But if you look closely in other ways, the heart of Murano seems just the same. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Courtney Collins, in for Krys Boyd. Tracy Chevalier whose most recent novel bends time to follow the same family from the 1400s to modern day gliding across decades and centuries. The way people in Murano hop a gondola back and forth to Venice. Led by the fierce and talented Orsola, members of the Rosso family survived plagues, experience, loss and learn new ways to preserve their beautiful work. As time marches relentlessly on. Tracy Chevalier’s novel is called “The Glassmaker,” and she joins us now to talk about it. Tracy, welcome to Think.
Tracy Chevalier [00:01:00] Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Courtney Collins [00:01:02] So will you share the story, first off, about kind of how you got started down the path of this book? Because this didn’t come from you. It came from someone who was one of your fans and readers.
Tracy Chevalier [00:01:13] Yes. You know, a lot of readers make suggestions to me about what I should write about. They come up to me after events, they email me, and their suggestions are always really interesting, but they usually are the most interesting to them. And I. I often end up saying, You know, I think you should write this book about me. And but once years ago, I was in Milan in Italy doing an event. And afterwards a man came up to me and said, I think you should write about Venetian glass beads because they were used in trade all over the world and they were made by women, often at their kitchen tables over a little lamp. And here’s some books about them. And I was very polite. I said, Thank you for the idea. I took the little books and I had a quick look at them, and then I put them on my shelf and sort of forgot about them for years, but they sort of stuck with me. Years later, I was trying to work out what to write, and I do like to write about people making things, particularly women, and that really appealed. And I was also I like the idea of writing about a book set in Venice, because Venice is such a wonderful city and it would be great to do research there and travel there a lot. So it just sort of came together then that I got those books off the shelf and dusted them off and started reading them.
Courtney Collins [00:02:51] So I’m assuming you had been to Venice before this idea came to you, but what what did you really know about kind of the link between Murano and Venice and the Glassmaking fame before you set to work doing this? Books research.
Tracy Chevalier [00:03:03] I didn’t know much at all. I had been to Venice many times before we went on our honeymoon 30 years ago, and in fact, that trip visited Murano because it’s just a 15 minute boat ride across and across the lagoon. And I had seen some glass factories and seen demonstrations and bought a necklace and things like that. But I didn’t really know much about the history of it. And we’ve been my husband and I and our son have been to Venice every two years for the art Biennale there. So I found a lot. But, you know, it’s one thing going as a tourist and something altogether different when you are writing about a place. So you look at it differently. You get to know the history of it differently. And then, of course, Murano I didn’t know anything about, and I had to learn everything about why glasses made there, how glasses made, and the history of the families and factories and workshops who made it from, as you mentioned at the start, from the 1400s all the way up to today.
Courtney Collins [00:04:11] And speaking of the span of time, what’s so wonderfully inventive about this book is the flow of time. We get to see the Rosso family journey through centuries while barely aging. So how did you settle on that approach? I’m guessing it had something to do with all the wonderful things you learned throughout the history of your research.
Tracy Chevalier [00:04:30] Yeah, I know it sounds a little crazy, but I wanted to cover the history of Venice from its heyday in the late 15th century, all the way up to what has happened to it now. So it was a very wealthy center of trade in the late 1400s. And now it’s sort of become you know, there were 120,000 people living in Venice and now there are less than 50,000. And it’s mainly a tourist destination. And I thought, how did that happen? When I started looking into the history of it, I didn’t want to stop after a 50 year span of of a family’s lifetime or a person’s lifetime of 80 years, I wanted to go on and and uncover all of the and explore all of the different history of the plague of 1575 that that killed a quarter of the population of Venice Napoleon invading Venice in 1797 and taking it over and handing it over to the Austrians all the way up to Covid in 2020. And that I early on thought that’s what I want to do. I know I want to cover that, but I also wanted to stick with the same family. The Rosses are a family. I make up. I made up. But I don’t like it when I’m reading a book and I get invested in characters and then suddenly it’s 200 years later and I have to carry care about their great, great, great, great grandchildren. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted the readers to be able to stay with Orsola and her family. And and I was contemplating this rather contradiction of what I wanted to do. And I suddenly thought, well, maybe they just don’t age at the same rate. Maybe they just won’t die. And it seemed so obvious to me and so clear that I could do that. It was only when my editors got hold of the book, the draft I had written that I realized it might not be as obvious to other people as it was to me, but I think it was partly that I was experiencing Venice in a timeless sort of way. So if you’ve ever been, you know, it’s it’s full of really old buildings. Its orientation is around water, like the main entrances of buildings used to be on the canals. There are no cars there. You get there and once you’re there a few days, you really forget about the rest of the world. And I think that’s kind of what happened to me as a writer there. I just didn’t worry about time. I just thought, I’m going to have these this family and their neighbors and friends and their lovers and associates live slower in are not exactly slower. They skip through time and they know that this is going on The mean on the mainland time is doing different things, but they don’t care because they’re very focused on Venice and on Murano. So that’s how I wrote it. And what I realized when with the help of my editors, that I need to help out the reader a little bit and explain what’s going on. So there’s a kind of a framework around it that explains quite explicitly how this works. And and then each section is a different century. And so maybe 100 years go by, but it’s like a stone skipping across the water landing at each century. And we and the characters do that. And so they age a little bit, but not too much. So we’re Scylla starts at age nine when she’s at the beginning of the book, and by the end of the book she’s in her late 60s. And it just seems to I think you just have to relax into it and then it works.
Courtney Collins [00:08:23] What was remarkable to me is a reader who really loved this approach because I cared very much for this family very quickly and didn’t want to lose track of them as time marched on. But what I couldn’t believe was how the characters remained so true to themselves from the 1400s to 2020. It was bizarre to me how someone I had gotten to know as a child or a teenager in the early part of the book seemed just as they should as a 60 something in 2020. Was that tricky to get kind of the tone of the character to translate across centuries, or were you surprised by how well it worked?
Tracy Chevalier [00:09:00] It was hard at times and it was funny. A reader said to me the other day, it’s so strange that Orsola was talking on a cell phone at the end, at the end of the book. It just seemed so odd. And I thought, Yeah, I guess it is. But you’ve also had several centuries to get used to this movement. And I think I think what was tricky is what I really learned from moving through time like that is how slowly everything moved in the 15, 16, 17, 18 century centuries and how it speeded up in the 19th and 20th century. So at the beginning of the H section, I sort of summarize what changed, what has changed over the time that’s gone by. And while you get to the shed, the beginning of the 20th century, in 1915, there’s a section and then there’s a section in 28 starts 2019. And I, I spent a long time on this one paragraph trying to or maybe two paragraphs trying to describe all that had changed from 1915 when they barely had electricity or cars to now, you know, and there was no computers, nothing. And it’s it’s incredible how quick the world is now. And I think what I had to do with the characters, luckily by then, by the time of the end of the book, I knew them so well because you get to know your characters when you’re writing. And at the beginning of the writing, I don’t always know how they what they’re like, how they are, how they sound, how they’re going to respond in situations. And it’s only through writing that I get to know them. And then that’s what editing is all about. So you get to the end of your draft and you go back to the beginning and sort of fix the section. Because I knew Orsola by the end really well, and I went back to the beginning when she’s nine years old and thought, okay, is this really what she would have done in this particular situation? Well, no. Well, yes. And and that’s how you you that’s how you get the characters to remain true because you get to know them so well. So even when they’re in unfamiliar situations like Orsola talking on a cell phone, I know Orsola now and I know what she’d be like if she’s talking on a cell phone. Now, the tricky thing is not get is in the earlier sections not getting to 21st century about the attitudes of the characters. So especially with with women characters, it’s very tempting to make them maybe a little more self-aware and feminist than they actually would be back then. You have to kind of restrain yourself and not sort of say, you know, woman power, girl power. They’re not they’re not thinking along those lines. They might do it in a more subtle way. So that’s the the trick is, especially when you’re writing historical fiction, is not to to lay over it. Maybe your own attitudes, too, to an earlier time.
Courtney Collins [00:12:00] I have to say, I really noticed you being restrained as a writer there because or Orsola and her mother, Laura, are really strong women with really interesting ideas, but they absolutely fit into the time that they’re living. I mean, or suppose Mom frequently does things behind the scenes to kind of make men think they had the idea themselves. I mean, it’s really interesting. There is a lot of respect for kind of the hierarchy and structure of the day as well as kind of obligation and resignation mixed in with their independence.
Tracy Chevalier [00:12:33] Yeah. And, you know, I think some of that reflects the the hierarchy that you find within the glassmaking community as well. So to learn to be a glass maker, you have to train for years. And the workshop is set up that you have the the young boys who’s there are no women involved, of course, at least back then. So you have the boys who are sweeping the floor and running and doing errands, and then you have the apprentices and then you have the assistants. And then in the each each stage they take an exam. And then finally you become an A maestro. And there’s one maestro per workshop. So it’s very, very hierarchical. The women are to one side of this, at least for several centuries, and they look after the household and and yeah, now and then they can make beads out of glass beads, but not in the workshop, not with the big furnace and the heavy glass and all that. But but with a little tiny thing at their kitchen table when they have time. So there’s this big contrast between what the men are expected and allowed to do and what the women do. And and the men’s hierarchy also extends the women are in that hierarchy, but very low down.
Courtney Collins [00:13:51] Talk to me a little bit about yourself as a mentor in bead making, who she was in real life.
Tracy Chevalier [00:13:58] Yes, This is Maria Borovier, who is one of the very few women named who was working in Glass back in the 15th century. And unlike unlike other women who made beads in a particular fashion at a kitchen table over a little lamp, she actually did work in in the workshop with the men. She was from a very famous family, the Boroviers, who invented all sorts of different techniques. And they’re still going. There are still boro views on their own now. And but Maria invented a bead that was made in the furnace, not over the lamp and made with molds and very carefully complicated. Lee Dunn, too, called Rosetta and it became red, white and blue. It’s sort of scalloped. That’s this beveled. It’s different layers that are beveled. So you see all these different patterns. And it became so popular that the doge of Venice, who’s the leader of Venice, though the top of the tree, he allowed her, he gave her permission to have her own furnace, which is totally unheard of for a woman at that time. And she when I read about her when I was first doing research, at first I thought maybe I’ll write the book about her. And then I thought, no, I’m kind of constrained by her biography and I don’t want to be constrained because I want to go forward some centuries. And I can’t do that with a real person, can’t have a real person not die that until the 21st century or whatever. You don’t you don’t I don’t mess around with history like that. Right. But I thought she could meet Orsola and Orsola as a teenager. There’s a family tragedy. And also Orsola wants to help her family out and she goes to Maria Borovier and says, What can I do? And Maria says, You could make beads. You know, you can’t work in the workshop with the men, but you could make beads are my my cousins can I can teach you. So that’s how and then Maria kind of looks out for her, looks after her a little bit and helps her with find the right merchant who’s going to the right deal for the right merchant who’s going to help sell her beads and and that. I do like having real people mixed in with my fictional characters because for me, in some ways, it’s a little bit of a cheat. As a historical writer, it’s like a shortcut or a way to to add verisimilitude into the novel so that the readers, you know, the Paul Napoleon’s wife, Josephine Bonaparte, appears, Casanova appears, and readers know these people really existed. So they think, it makes them start to think maybe Orsola really existed. I mean, they know that she didn’t, but it makes it easier to accept, to suspend disbelief, which is what you have to do in a novel, is that, you know, any time you read a novel, you’re, you’re, you’re creating and that the writers created a world for you and you create that world in your own head and you believe in it while you’re reading the book and to how real care real people in that world just helps it along a little bit, I think.
Courtney Collins [00:17:17] Speaking of Casanova, I have to say as a reader, it’s really fun to see Casanova appear because you kind of know, you can kind of see him coming in a way. And, you know, it’s funny is the rousseau’s kind of can, too. They know it’s probably not going to end well with Casanova yet. They can’t really resist. And it’s a really fun kind of playful way to weave real life into history. It’s it must have been really gratifying to kind of see that leap off the page.
Tracy Chevalier [00:17:41] I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t resist adding Casanova. And because he does represent a certain time in Venice’s history, when things were starting to disintegrate, they were starting. It was becoming the place to go on the grand tour. And you gamble and you, you know, wine, woman and song kind of thing. And you seduce people and you. And he just was so representative of that that I couldn’t help but give him a little part. And he he effectively ruins the the authors for the Rosso’s for a little while. Right. And it it’s, it it but, but I don’t want him I didn’t want him that too big a part so he, he and so I only I think I only mention him once. Right. I didn’t mention his name once, but I had so much fun researching him because at the end of his life, he became a librarian. I mean, that just. It just blows the mind, really. He was in Bohemia as a librarian, very bored, no longer so seductive. And he thought, Well, I’m just going to write my journals. I’m going to retell my whole life in several volumes. And so I read the bits where he was in Venice because he went all over the place. But the parts when he was in Venice during the time that I wanted to write about, I read all about that and it was so fun. I can’t believe the recall he had and of course is told from his point of view. So all the women just adored him and had a great time. And whether that was actually true, who knows? But what really amused me was there was a Murano connection and I discovered that he had an affair with a nun on Murano, then went to visit her in the convent and became involved with a second nine. So they had a threesome. And I thought, okay. I think I might have to figure out a way to at least mention this.
Courtney Collins [00:19:31] So that’s impossible. Much like Casanova, that that cannot be resisted.
Tracy Chevalier [00:19:37] Yes, exactly. Exactly. And sort of once I got to know him through the journal, I thought, I think that the Rossos are going to be seduced by him. And as exactly as you said, they kind of know it or Orsola knows she really shouldn’t be making this necklace for him or her brother. Marco’s the maestro of the workshop. Probably underneath it all knows he shouldn’t be making this massive, expensive chandelier for him. But he does anyway. And it’s. It was huge fun to do.
Courtney Collins [00:20:10] So going back to also learning to work beads, that was a really interesting section of the book because she’s truly learning something very difficult from scratch. I mean, this is not something someone can just walk into. I mean, her first step is to work on passing honey back and forth between sticks to get practice in shaping something molten. That must have been a really interesting section because we’re all kind of right there with her, certainly rooting for her to succeed. But is it a slow going, difficult work to become very good at this?
Tracy Chevalier [00:20:42] Yes. And I was right there literally with her, too. I, I with research, I often try to do what my characters do, especially the making things, because it’s so much easier to write about it than, you know, if I just watched somebody or watched online some of these videos about them making beads, I don’t pick up on the detail that I do when I actually try to do it myself. So when I was, you know, I went to Venice several times and stayed on Murano and got to know people there, became friends with people there. And there was a woman I did two bead baking sessions with and and then back in London where I live, I also found two other people I did two sessions with, and each time I just thought, this is so difficult. And it’s, you know, when you melt glass like that and you’ve got it on this little skewer and you’re turning it back and forth and trying to shape it in as I want to do what you want it to do. And it takes years to get it to do what you want it to do, to get the symmetry to get. And besides that, also just trying to decide what color is going to go and what color, what shape am I going to make it? What? How am I going to decorate? Decorate it? You have to have that kind of eye, a designer’s eye, as well as trying to shape the thing. And one of the the woman on a Murano who taught me, she said at one point, you know what? I have my students do. I get them to take runny honey and I get two. They get two chopsticks and they have to pass it back and forth between the chopsticks. And that’s the runny honey is kind of the consistency of molten glass. And that’s how they learn to control it. And, you know, that was a detail, of course, except I changed chopsticks to sticks. And but I, I added that into the book and that felt really true. And then, in fact, I sat down in my own backyard, and it was during the first lockdown of the pandemic and I got two chopsticks and I was messing around with the honey and it got all over the place. And I thought, this is this is what my characters would be doing. And so I could add it in and make and feel that I was being authentic.
Courtney Collins [00:23:02] I don’t really make a practice of underlining when I read novels, because novels, the way you read them-
Tracy Chevalier [00:23:08] You musn’t do that.
Courtney Collins [00:23:08] Right? Exactly. I have not an underlying or I do when I prep a nonfiction book for an interview. I do lots of notetaking in underlining, but a novel I just like to read and experience. But I did underline one sentence and the entirety of the book, and it was when or Sola said she had no intention of being spare. To me, that just summed her up so perfectly for a variety of reasons. I wonder what you want to share with me about that sentiment. She was going to learn this. She had no intention of being spare.
Tracy Chevalier [00:23:37] You know, it’s actually a little Easter egg hidden for any readers who have read my book before this one, which is called A Single Thread, and it was set in the 1930s at Winchester Cathedral, just south of London. And at in after World War One, there were more women than men in the country, in the United Kingdom. And there was an article came out despairing about these spare women, and that’s what they called them. What are we going to do with these spare women? They are sociologically an issue for us because they’re not going to be able to marry. What are they going to be able to do? And the book is really about one of those spare women. And I think I just as I was writing along in the glassmaker, I think that line came along and I just thought, yeah, or is not going to be like Violet Speedwell, my last heroine. She’s not going to be spare. And I just put those words in her mouth and it just made me smile. It made me. Sometimes these things stick out a little bit. And maybe that’s why you underlined it stuck out just a little bit. Maybe it’s just a little bit modern. You know, I was talking about earlier about how sometimes you can’t help but have your own 21st century thoughts or at least 20th century thoughts. You put them into your onto your characters. And maybe I do that a little bit there, but I couldn’t resist.
Courtney Collins [00:25:11] What I loved about it, though, is because Orsola’s motivation for becoming a bead maker isn’t. I mean, there’s a lot of love in the craft. I think eventually she gets to really love what she does. But there’s also she is determined in a way that is just it transcends just wanting to be an artist. She wants to contribute. She wants to succeed. She will not fail. So to me, that line really kind of brings all of that together, which I think is why I underlined it. But I like what you had. Is that. Yeah.
Tracy Chevalier [00:25:41] I think that she felt otherwise her life would have been solely about having children, bringing them up, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and supporting the men in her life. And that wasn’t enough for her. It’s enough for some people and it isn’t enough for other people. And it wasn’t enough for her, especially as she got the taste of of creativity, of being of making something beautiful. And, you know, when you make something and it’s satisfying it, you just want to do it more. And if you can make a living off of it even better. So I think she sensed that there was also a bit of what I call the flow that you enter when you’re creating something. I certainly get it when I’m writing, when it’s a good writing day. And and anybody who creates who makes something, whether it’s knitting a jumper or painting a painting or making or playing a piece of music and you get really into it and you’re focused and you’re not thinking about anything else and you’re doing the best that you can. It’s a really great feeling. And and I think that she felt that and wanted to continue feeling that. And you don’t feel that when you’re doing laundry, I’m afraid.
Courtney Collins [00:27:04] So she certainly did not she was not a fan of bleaching the sheets. So was was there a chunk of the book that was especially captivating to write? I know for me as a reader, I was just really riveted by the section that took place during the plague.
Tracy Chevalier [00:27:20] Yeah, that was it was hard and it was also satisfying is the wrong word. But I felt it. I felt it hard because. So this is a plague that took place in 1575 and 76. In Venice, a quarter of the population died. And I did the research for that section. Just after the first lockdown ended in London. I went to the British Library, which was had reopened but was limited access. So you had to sit six feet apart so that you could sit in every other desk and you had to be masked. And I had ordered these books about the plague, and I was reading them, taking notes and marveling that they did some of the same things we did. You know, they gave us the template for how to act. So there was quarantines and there was tracing your contacts and shutting down, shutting down shops and cutting the you know, turning off the public transportation. There were no boats. And it was it was just it was bizarre. It was a surreal experience. And then writing about them being quarantined and locked up when I had just gone through that myself. And I also remember thinking we had it so easy compared.
Courtney Collins [00:28:43] My gosh.
Tracy Chevalier [00:28:44] There was no chance of a vaccine. They didn’t even understand how it got transmitted. There is no modern medicine. You know, a quarter of the population died and they died. Terrible deaths. I mean, some, of course, people with Covid who died also died, terrible deaths. But, you know, people got these black buboes. They were called these these boils all over their bodies. They were really, really, unbelievably ill. And it was just awful. And people were stuck with this for a long time. So writing that was was really hard. And I think what kind of saved it is something we haven’t talked about yet, which is that there’s also a big love story as this book and the two people who love each other are separated by a quarantine. And and they also haven’t they haven’t declared themselves to each other, but they’re looking at each other from an open window and from the street. And and that that kept Orsola going. And I think it keeps the reader going to through some very grim moments.
Courtney Collins [00:29:55] I know. It certainly does. It’s very hard to imagine that the section of the book dealing with people being nailed into their homes and people dying and of basically forgotten hospitals is also the most beautiful part of the love story between two people. And, you know, her, her love from a distance as well as her beads, kind of became a symbol of hope during that really dark time.
Tracy Chevalier [00:30:16] Yeah. There’s a bid that she makes. At some point, they run out of money. And the Antonio, who is the great love of her life, is. Is helping them to get food. And they run out of anything to pay. And he says, can you make something? And she and Orsola starts making beads again. But the beads are very important at that moment and all the way through.
Courtney Collins [00:30:41] So, Tracy, I do want to ask you a little bit about your writing process. Before we get to that, I have to share I had no idea how closely guarded the glass trade was on Murano and how someone who worked and trained on Murano decided to leave and take their secrets with them. It wasn’t well-received.
Tracy Chevalier [00:31:01] No, they were threatened with that would be people come after them and kill them. So that tended to keep them on their island. But some people did leave. And eventually, you know, Murano had this monopoly on glassmaking for centuries, and they were kept their secrets closely guarded. But eventually the techniques and the recipes and all that kind of trickled out. And Prague became a big center of glassmaking, as did London and Amsterdam and other places. So then surely that by bit Murano’s hold on. Glass making in the world lessened. Having said that, it’s still a huge center and very well respected. I mean, they make beautiful, beautiful stuff. And I it when I was researching there and staying there a lot, I got to know people. And it was fascinating to hear, fascinating to hear them talk both about each other and also about the rest of the world and glassmaking. And they were they could be very critical. Glass makers could be very critical of each other. But if anybody criticized Murano glass as a whole, they would get incredibly defensive. So, I mean, we’re all like that, I guess. But it was it’s a it’s still a very close knit community.
Courtney Collins [00:32:24] Kind of the old I can make fun of my brother, but you better not make fun of my brother.
Tracy Chevalier [00:32:28] Exactly. Exactly.
Courtney Collins [00:32:31] I also didn’t know much about Enslaved Gondoliers. You wrote a really beautiful character in this book named Domenico. What did you learn about people coming from Africa and working as a gondolier in Venice?
Tracy Chevalier [00:32:44] I know that was very surprising. A lot of things surprising about Venice, but I was one of the ways I like to research is to look at paintings from the period. And I became fascinated by Carpaccio, who is a Venetian painter in the late 15th century. And not only did I get the feeling of Orsola and Antonio from those paintings, from some of his paintings, but I also was looking at this one painting called The Miracle of the Cross, the Bridge of Rialto, and it’s this huge painting with lots of noblemen and wearing black and red robes. And there is the Grand Canal, this big body of water with lots of gondoliers. And they in the middle of them all is an African gondolier. And I was like, What? I had no idea there were black people in Venice in the 15th century. And I looked it up and it turned out he would have been enslaved. And I thought, you know, I just immediately knew instinctively that I wanted to make him into a character. We have no idea who the man who is depicted in the in the painting really was, or even if he existed as a particular person or whether he was just made up with by carpaccio as imagination. But there definitely were African gondoliers. And I thought, okay, his name is Domenico. I know he’s going to play an important part in the book, but I won’t even I can’t even describe what it is yet, but I just wrote him and it’s sort of only afterwards that I realized that he had become hidden Orsola have a kind of friendship. And he is. He represents. An attempt to find freedom because he he could buy his own freedom. But the price was so high that he couldn’t pay it. And. Also is also trying to find freedom of a sort through making beads, a kind of creative freedom. And Domenico is trying to find a real freedom, you know, actual freedom. And I just wanted to compare and contrast those and also to remind people that Venice was not just full of Italians, just full of Venetians, but it actually was a center of trade. And so there were all kinds of different people. So another very important character is Klingberg, who’s a German merchant, and there were Turkish merchants and there were lots of connections of the Middle East. And so it is just a kind of reminder that it was a very international place.
Courtney Collins [00:35:27] We’ve talked about this a bit, but the idea of things being either changeable or static are kind of themes that come up frequently in this book. I guess now that you’re a little bit backed up from all the research you’ve done and all the visiting, in your view, what about Murano or Venice now is is most similar to what it was all those centuries ago. What what is that thread that really just feels the same to you?
Tracy Chevalier [00:35:51] I think the most important thing that I notice when I’m there is the lack of cars. And it’s when you leave Venice, you realize just how much the world has shifted so that it works around the car rather than cars working around pedestrians or boats. And it’s it’s it’s always a shock to the system to have to deal with cars again. And I think that is one of the things that makes Venice so special. The other is the. Is the importance of water. You know that that’s how you get around. And also that you’re always seeing it and smelling it and hearing it. So it provides a kind of backdrop that other cities don’t have in quite the same way. It’s also a place that’s very disorienting of the because the passageways are by and large, pretty narrow. And so you’re hard to see the sun even when it’s sunny, until you come out to the big water and then the water takes over and you see the sky and you see the sun. But it’s so easy to get lost. I mean, that’s what a lot of people talk about, is this incredibly narrow passageways that seem to lead nowhere. And you’re going down someplace. You think you know where you are and turns out you’re going in the opposite direction or it it dead ends into a canal and you’re just constantly disoriented. And I have learned to love the disorientation rather than always wanting to know where I am. You know, I think in this age of smartphones where we have Google Maps open and we’re just looking at it all the time and we we don’t like to get lost. We I think we’re starting to feel that that’s a scary thing. And actually, I think that Venice. It is good to get lost there. And I think that people back back in the 15th century also got kind of lost. You know, they were they tended to know their own neighborhoods. So they would they would get lost in other places and sometimes fall into the canals. But it’s a very it’s it’s that feeling of familiarity, but disorientation at the same time, which is, I think, what still links it to the past. One of the many things.
Courtney Collins [00:38:20] I also love how when person is briefly away from the water and on what she calls terra firma, she’s very disoriented. To be away from it, which I love, is kind of a counter to what you just described.
Tracy Chevalier [00:38:33] Yeah. You know, and she’s surprised she smells horses because that’s how people got around. But there were no horses on on Venice and Venice. So it’s it’s for her, it’s a it’s a disorientation and also the kind of she thinks that people are looking at her strangely and that she’s a stranger and she doesn’t like to be a stranger because she lives on a small island of Murano. She knows everybody. And so these things are very disorienting for her.
Courtney Collins [00:39:02] So I’m actually leading a discussion group about this book. I personally love talking about shared books with friends and loved ones. Do you think there’s a real value in, you know, book clubs and community reading groups?
Tracy Chevalier [00:39:13] Yes, I know. I love nothing more than to talk to a friend who’s read the same book as me. And. And I think you get even more out of a book by talking about it with someone afterwards because they have inevitably have a slightly different perspective. And you can you can you can also just remember the things that you loved so much or didn’t like or didn’t understand. And I think book clubs are really good for all of that. I think also book clubs do encourage people to read things they wouldn’t normally choose. It’s a little bit like going into a clothing store and you know how you always reach for black or you always reach for blue or. And then if somebody says, Why don’t you try this yellow blouse? And that’s what it’s not something you would ever have chosen for yourself and and actually looks really good. I think books can be the same way that there are books that you get that people recommend, that people choose and you have to read them. And and that’s not necessarily a bad thing to go outside your comfort zone.
Courtney Collins [00:40:20] Do you have someone in your life you like to pass books back and forth with? Like, I love to read something my mom has just read or vice versa. It’s just so much fun. It’s a weird love language, but a shared book is, yeah, different than watching a movie or TV show.
Tracy Chevalier [00:40:33] Yeah, it is my I my friend Simona, who was a bookseller for a long time. We go for walks and we just talk about books for almost the whole time. And and it’s so great. And we lend each other books and we don’t always have the same taste. And I appreciate that about her. And I think she does about me as well, that, you know, we stretch each other and challenge each other, but in a in a really positive way.
Courtney Collins [00:41:00] Speaking of reading, I always like to ask my novelists if there is a new genre you’re exploring or if you’re hooked on a particular kind of book right now or what you’re reading in general.
Tracy Chevalier [00:41:12] Okay. So at the moment I have just started a book by. Well, it’s a series of books called The Casilli Chronicles by Elizabeth Howard, which is she wrote them in the 1990s. They’re set in the 1930s. I think there are six books and they are a wonderful family saga. Beautifully done. Beautifully done in the run up to the war and through the war. And they’re kind of they’re just they’re just books to sink into. And the first one is called The Light Years. And the other book, it’s like, couldn’t be more different from that that I surprised myself by Loving is called Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It’s on the Booker Prize shortlist. It’s hardly 100 pages long. I think it might be 120 pages long. It’s about a day in the life of six astronauts, astronauts up on the International Space Station. And what they see as they orbit around the earth and you hear a little bit of their their back stories, but it’s really mostly a love letter to the planet. And what you see from way up there and what and there’s it’s just like a meditation. And I surprised myself that I loved it so much because I really like plot. I like stories. And this doesn’t have much plot, but it’s beautifully done. And it made me kind of cry at the end and and think about the planet and and I highly recommend it.
Courtney Collins [00:42:48] So when I finished this book, “The Glassmaker,” I felt weirdly empowered to kind of be in charge of my own personal and professional destiny. And after reading this book, I’m wondering myself, why do you think a young bead maker in the 1400s so resonant today? I couldn’t believe how connected I felt to kind of worthless story. Why do you think that is?
Tracy Chevalier [00:43:10] Wow, That’s so great to hear. I, I don’t know. You probably could answer that better than I could, but I maybe partly it’s that it the connection is literally there because it goes all the way from the 1400s up until now. And so you feel like you are walking down the street with Orsola now. And yet she extends all the way back. And and that’s just a joy because I that’s what I’m trying to do is, is bring this bring history to people in a way, bring our past to people and readers in a way that they can that resonates, that they can connect with rather than feel like history is not important or is something they don’t understand or they find boring. It’s not boring. What people what our ancestors went through is really interesting and not so different from us. I mean, witness the plague. So it’s. I’m delighted to hear that. I think we’re slow. Would be amused by that, too.
Courtney Collins [00:44:16] Well, we’re almost out of time. But quickly, before we go, I’m wondering, for those who haven’t been to Venice, who haven’t been to Murano, but they have the resources and ability to do so, why should they visit that part of the world?
Tracy Chevalier [00:44:29] I think they should go because it is beautiful and unique and there is a magic there, that feeling of timelessness. I think that once you get there, you’ll really understand why the book is written the way it is, but also just let your own life fall away and and just marvel at how absolutely gorgeous it is and and feel yourself a part of it for a few days.
Courtney Collins [00:44:58] Do you miss the Rosso family now that you’re done writing about them? They seem like they would be a little hard to shake. They’re really special.
Tracy Chevalier [00:45:05] Yeah, I do miss them. But they also the characters, all my characters and all my books are still with me inside. Even the ones who have died, you know, they’re still there. And yeah, it’s kind of sad not to be able to continue or lose life, but I think I’ve left her in a good place.
Courtney Collins [00:45:24] My guest this hour is Tracy Chevalier, a New York Times bestselling author. Her new book is called “The Glassmaker.” Tracy, thank you so much for your time. What a wonderful conversation.
Tracy Chevalier [00:45:35] It’s been great pleasure. Thank you.
Courtney Collins [00:45:37] Think is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcasts for free wherever you get your podcasts. Once again, I’m Courtney Collins, in for Krys Boyd. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
