The Four Pivots explores the connection between personal transformation and social change, accountability and grace

Though I'm not interested in humanizing myself to others, there is a lot of good in this book

This weekend I read Maggie O’Farrell’s tremendous novel “The Marriage Portrait”, and it left me astonished, bewildered, in awe. I’m not sure if I have a favourite author, but if I did, Maggie O’Farrell might be mine. If not number one, she’s definitely in my top five authors. Each of her books is so different - I loved Instructions of a Heatwave, and according to this out of focus video with poor sound about “The Hand that first held Mine”, I loved that book too.

The Marriage Portrait is inspired by Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” and is about a real person named Lucrezia, who was the third daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence. At age 15, Lucrezia married Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara in lieu of her older sister who was engaged to the Duke but died before their marriage. The novel is set in 1550s and 1560 Italy, and the first page of the novel announces that less than a year after her marriage, Lucrezia is dead, and rumoured to have been killed by her husband. The book opens with them alone in a hunting lodge, and Lucrezia’s realizing that the Duke intends to murder her. The book then goes back in time to share more of her life and her first year of marriage. Through the book, we learn more about her childhood, her attempts to resist her marriage, her attempts to fit in and gain acceptance with her husband when the marriage cannot be stopped, her realizations about her husband’s dangerous personality and his desire to end her. It is an incredible, thrilling, creepy read, and I loved it.

I’ve been thinking about this book in the context of another book I’ve been reading over the past month called “The Four Pivots” by Shawn A. Ginwright. “The Four Pivots” is about shifts we need to make to reimagine justice and heal. It posits that social change comes from personal transformation and healing, not problem solving, power building or more tactical approaches to social change alone. The book outlines four pivots needed for healing-centred leadership with a few chapters devoted to different aspects of what each specific pivot entails.

The book’s central thesis is that personal transformation is needed for social change, that resisting does not equal building, and more than simply describing problems, we must imagine and dream the futures that we want.

In this newsletter I describe my takeaways and disagreements with this book, a recipe I loved this week, my favourite new television show, and some of my favourite recent reads. Subscribe to keep reading.