Petronella Oortman's father has died, leaving their family broke. Her mother thinks that marrying Petronella to a rich man will save Petronella from poverty and assure her future. She writes to all of her contacts, and a man from Amsterdam responds.
He comes to visit Petronella in her small town, and she plays the lute for him. They marry, he departs, and she leaves some time later to join him in Amsterdam.
She's surprised and disappointed that he's not there to meet her. She meets instead his sister and his two servants. She feels unwelcome.
He finally returns home, but he seems never to have any time for her. He surprises her one day with a very large cabinet, a miniature replica of his house on the Golden Bend in Amsterdam.
She's disappointed by the gift but she eventually resolves to furnish it by writing to a miniaturist advertised in Smit's List, the local list of merchants. Soon, the miniaturist begins to send her miniatures she has not requested, and she is mystified and fearful about what they may mean.
At the same time, tensions between her husband and his sister seem to rise, and they also make her feel uneasy.
This book has a number of surprises and a supernatural element. Because it's set in 17th century Amsterdam, I expected "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and that is not this book.
On the back of my copy of The Miniaturist, there is a blurb from the UK newspaper Observer review: "A fabulously gripping read that will appeal to fans of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Goldfinch, but Burton is a genuinely new voice with her visceral take on sex, race and class." Sex, race and class are central to this novel. It won't surprise you, I'm sure, that I didn't expect that focus on sex, race and class in a novel set in the 17th century. While that focus reflects the concerns of our own time, I found myself feeling that the novel's voice was authentic rather than a vehicle for exploring the issues of our time.
I found Jessie Burton's writing style surprising: she regularly used words with which I was not familiar and her prose was often more poetic than concrete. This did not affect (I don't think, anyway) my ability to understand the story (and there was a lot of plot in this book).
It appears to me that she did a great deal of research; I know little of 17th century Dutch society, or how it may have differed from city to country, etc. I was under the impression that Vermeer and his family were hidden Catholics and that their Catholicism was an open secret that was tolerated by their neighbors.
I mention this because the neighbors in this novel are not tolerant, and I was surprised.
This novel's conflict is between the private and the public sphere. At the beginning of the novel, I thought, "This is Rebecca," the novel by Daphne du Maurier. But, by the end of the novel, I felt that the plot was very different from that novel and that a great deal of focus was on private actions and private values being in conflict with the larger world.
Above all, it was a very suspenseful novel. I have the feeling that a lot of people will enjoy the suspense, and some people will feel that not all questions have been tidily answered by the end of the novel.
He comes to visit Petronella in her small town, and she plays the lute for him. They marry, he departs, and she leaves some time later to join him in Amsterdam.
She's surprised and disappointed that he's not there to meet her. She meets instead his sister and his two servants. She feels unwelcome.
He finally returns home, but he seems never to have any time for her. He surprises her one day with a very large cabinet, a miniature replica of his house on the Golden Bend in Amsterdam.
She's disappointed by the gift but she eventually resolves to furnish it by writing to a miniaturist advertised in Smit's List, the local list of merchants. Soon, the miniaturist begins to send her miniatures she has not requested, and she is mystified and fearful about what they may mean.
At the same time, tensions between her husband and his sister seem to rise, and they also make her feel uneasy.
This book has a number of surprises and a supernatural element. Because it's set in 17th century Amsterdam, I expected "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and that is not this book.
On the back of my copy of The Miniaturist, there is a blurb from the UK newspaper Observer review: "A fabulously gripping read that will appeal to fans of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Goldfinch, but Burton is a genuinely new voice with her visceral take on sex, race and class." Sex, race and class are central to this novel. It won't surprise you, I'm sure, that I didn't expect that focus on sex, race and class in a novel set in the 17th century. While that focus reflects the concerns of our own time, I found myself feeling that the novel's voice was authentic rather than a vehicle for exploring the issues of our time.
I found Jessie Burton's writing style surprising: she regularly used words with which I was not familiar and her prose was often more poetic than concrete. This did not affect (I don't think, anyway) my ability to understand the story (and there was a lot of plot in this book).
It appears to me that she did a great deal of research; I know little of 17th century Dutch society, or how it may have differed from city to country, etc. I was under the impression that Vermeer and his family were hidden Catholics and that their Catholicism was an open secret that was tolerated by their neighbors.
I mention this because the neighbors in this novel are not tolerant, and I was surprised.
This novel's conflict is between the private and the public sphere. At the beginning of the novel, I thought, "This is Rebecca," the novel by Daphne du Maurier. But, by the end of the novel, I felt that the plot was very different from that novel and that a great deal of focus was on private actions and private values being in conflict with the larger world.
Above all, it was a very suspenseful novel. I have the feeling that a lot of people will enjoy the suspense, and some people will feel that not all questions have been tidily answered by the end of the novel.
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