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Loading... Girl with a Pearl Earring, Deluxe Editionby Tracy Chevalier
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I don't have any strong feelings about this one. It was passably interesting, and I thought Griet was a fairly well-developed (if slightly tragic) character, but the plot itself was not exactly gripping. It would probably appeal to someone with a lust for historical fiction of this era. Me, I'm just glad this was the version with the painting on the front cover rather than the picture from the movie. I often turned back to look, comparing the descriptions in the narrative to the original artwork. It certainly made me see things in the image I never had before. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  Review for the abridged Audio CD version. I have read the book, seen the film and now, listened to the Audio CD - all are wonderful. The audio version was beautifully narrated by Isla Blair and I found myself listening to each CD twice, not because I'd lost the thread but because it was such a pleasure to listen again to the rich language and descriptions. Griet is the young servant girl, newly arrived in the house of the Dutch painter Vermeer. All the worst tasks fall to her but she bravely accepts her lot and perseveres. As time passes she starts to earn the trust of Vermeer, "The Master". He allows her to prepare his colours, purchase them from the pharmacy and, eventually, to pose for a painting requested by his patron who has taken a fancy to "The wide-eyed maid". Meanwhile, life carries on behind the scenes with Vermeer's sensitive wife, Catharina, his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, Tanneke the older maid and a brood of children. I have read all of Tracy Chevalier's books except the less popular Burning Bright. A truly wonderful author. Don't miss this one. (  )2  DubaiReader | Oct 13, 2009 | One of my favorite books of all time. (  ) BoomChick | Oct 13, 2009 | A coming of age story about Griet, a young maid and assistant to the artist, Vermeer. Set in 17th century Holland. Extremely well written. Chevalier writes like a semiotician in her description of Vermeer’s paintings and like an artist herself in Griet’s thoughts about art and the artist’s way of seeing. nbertolo | Oct 7, 2009 | Slow at first, but then I couldn't put it down. I loved the tension between Vermeer and the main character. It definitely gave me a new appreciation for Vermeer's art! ( ) ahooper04 | Oct 6, 2009 | 
 For a while it seems that it will be... an artist romance. Tracy Chevalier steers her novel deliberately close and tacks abruptly away. The book she has written, despite a lush note or two and occasional incident overload, is something far different and better... [Instead, it is] a brainy novel whose passion is ideas. Chevalier's exploration into the soul of this complex but nave young woman is moving, and her depiction of 17th-century Delft is marvelously evocative.
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| Book description |
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Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant--and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model. Chevalier vividly evokes the complex domestic tensions of the household, ruled over by the painter's jealous, eternally pregnant wife and his taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic. Still, Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist.
Throughout, Chevalier cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style, whose exactitude is an effective homage to the painter himself. Even Griet's most humdrum duties take on a high if unobtrusive gloss:
I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical.In assembling such quotidian particulars, the author acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study The Embarrassment of Riches. Her novel also joins a crop of recent, painterly fictions, including Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever and Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Can novelists extract much more from the Dutch golden age? The question is an open one--but in the meantime, Girl with a Pearl Earring remains a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, and an appealingly new take on an old master. --Jerry Brotton
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)
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