Orsola Rosso was born into glass. Living in Murano, an island off Venice, her father and brothers are work everyday blowing and shaping glass, and she is the girl looking in, trying to find a place for herself within the art. Her chances comes in the form of beads, her heart in the shape of a Venetian man, and as centuries pass, the Rossos and their glass change along with it.

This was a beautifully told story that will make you want to stand in the bustling streets of Venice, smell the canal water, hear the shouts and singing of the gondoliers and maybe even take the water taxi over to Murano and study the beautiful glassware shining in the windows.

Orsola is a character built of fortitude - made to feel lesser then by her bully of a brother, and forced to do household labour by her mother and sister-in-law, she stills finds ways to make her own art and also have her own moments of joy. She constantly fights for her family, even when they have given up on themselves and the only gripe I would have is she is never truly given the credit she deserves for saving them many times over. As the world changes, Orsola experiences many things but is never in the center of them - I liked this as a way of examining the changes in the world, the affect this had on a trade city like Venice and in turn Murano, while not pushing the character too much into something that would have felt too much for her.

The choice of the author to add the slight magical realism element of having the Rossos and their friends and acquaintances age normally but let the world fast forward around them sometimes skipping almost 100 years was interesting and hard to really understand at first. But I liked seeing how the Rossos dealt with plague, war, Napoleon and then the modern age - we even see the Covid pandemic referenced. I think the story would have worked just as well being stuck in a certain era as I was entranced by Orsola and her personality, her love and her art on its own.