venice doesn’t believe in the concept of time (but i do)

It was the last page and the tears could NOT be contained. Bam. Water works. The tear ducks were paddling furiously, what can I say?

But the question is – the real question is – who IS the main character of The Glassmaker? Because I really don’t think it’s Orsola Rosso, the alleged main character.

Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives perfecting. In secret, Orsola Rosso learns to craft glass.

As a woman, she must flout convention to save her family from ruin.

We follow her through hundreds of years of war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. Skipping like a stone across the centuries, The Glassmaker is a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as glass.

I think the main character is Venice. I think it’s Murano, the island next to Venice; the conceit of the book is that time flows differently there. Eighty years can pass on ‘terraferma’ and only four in Venice/Murano.

…

The absolutely most important thing about that is this: you must not think about the logistics. You must not think about the *physics*. Einstein, who?

I have so many questions. So many. Climate change, for example, affects Murano. But if time is flowing differently on the island … how is climate change affecting Murano at the same rate as the rest of the world? Or is it just the people who are unaffected? The mammals. Okay.

Okay, let’s go with that rule. But what about their clothes? If time only affects the living beings, what about their clothes? There’s a particular dress that survives hundreds of years of wear.

So clothes. And one assumes, food. And living things.

What about the fish in the water? Where is the boundary?

I just have … so many questions. Too many questions.

If time simply blinks and then leaps ahead eighty, one hundred, two hundred years … how are they still trading glass? Surely they wouldn’t be able supply the demand of years and years worth of glass? Is it simply inaccessible to the rest of the world in the leap years? Other glass works would pop up to fulfill the demand, no? How is the same merchant trading glass? A hundred years of deals in an afternoon? Dang, that’s a grueling 9-5.

Oh it doth make NO sense!

Readers, Friends, Countrymen, I don’t buy it (and I don’t want your ears. Even on a loan basis. Please keep them).

Listen, this is not a bad book at all; if you view it as a clever history of Venice and glass making from 1486 onwards … sure! It’s very interesting and I learned about glass making! I love glass making! (I’m also scared of it. Because you know, the burns.)

It is simply that my suspension of disbelief could not remain suspended. The device of the ‘time skipping’ was too much for me; I need in-universe logic. I can accept the most insane, crazy devices if the logic is sound. Or at least unsound in a funny way. (Heck, I just read four books about a man who was turned into a fish.) But not this. Not quite.

It leaped to COVID times. It said that it had caught up to ‘us. now.’ and I just object to that on a zoological, philosophical, emotional, spiritual and every ‘al’ basis. That was a dreadful time, thank you very much.

If you’d like to experience the time skipping yourself, click here.