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Loading... Girl with a Pearl Earring (original 1999; edition 2001)by Tracy Chevalier
Work detailsGirl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999)
I saw the movie several years ago and loved it. The book is great too. Lovely descriptions of Vermeer's paintings and the process of creating them. (  ) Mortybanks | May 20, 2013 |  Set in 1664 in Holland. Chevalier selects a masterpiece and then weaves a story to describe its provenance. A 16 year old girl Griet, is forced to become a maid in the house of artist Johannes Vermeer as her father has been blinded in an accident and the family needs money. It is her job to clean the artists studio, and a she does so, realises she has a talent for design and colour. Vermeer and Griet are very attracted to each other. Vermeer is forced to paint her portrait by his rich benefactor. She knows that Vermeer’s wife Catharina will be furious so the painting is done in secret. Vermeer is not happy with the painting and thinks it is missing a ‘spark’. He then forces Griet to wear his wife’s peal earrings, knowing that this will be the end of Griet’s job. Griet leaves and marries the butchers son. Ten years later, Vermeer dies and leaves the peal earrings to Griet in his will. (  ) dalzan | Apr 18, 2013 | Probably more like 4.5 stars. Loved it, and I'm now off to hunt up a DVD of the movie which stars the wonderful Colin Firth as Vermeer. ( ) jemidar | Apr 15, 2013 | I'm not sure what I think of this book. It was not what I expected. It does not fit in any of my mental categories of good books or of bad books. I was compelled to keep reading, so I'm pretty sure that for the most part I liked the protagonist and was intrigued by her position in the Vermeer house. Yet I did not like the circumstances she fell into, nor could necessarily endorse her decisions in dealing with those situations (I'm thinking of Pieter, her parents, van Ruijven, the master). Maybe what is disconcerting to me is the depth that seems to be in the character Griet, but so much of it only scratches the surface, and though we have her thoughts, we do not have them all. Maybe because she does not know them all herself. Some are felt, not articulated. Unusual, but worth reading. (  ) LDVoorberg | Apr 7, 2013 | This is a fictional account of a 16-year old girl who is sent to work as a maid at Vermeer’s house and who becomes the subject of the painting known as “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” The basic linear narrative is not so much weak as overwhelmed by the eddying swirls of tension and emotion, often fickle in its course. The physical action is often obscured by seeming metaphor or perceived shifts of attitude and, the motivations for some of the action is unclear. However, the descriptive language of Girl with a Pearl Earring is evocative of time and place, anchoring the emotional story arc not only to the paintings of Vermeer, but to the locale of 17th c. Delft and in particular, Vermeer’s household. There is an excellent web-site devoted to Vermeer and his work: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/vermeer_painting_part_one.html The book itself, describes only a few of Vermeer’s paintings, and it appears that I would have to go to Germany to see the famous painting, “Girl with a Pearl Earring;” but I will be able to see “A Lady Writing” when I travel home to Washington, DC this summer (the painting is at the National Gallery) and when I do, I know I’ll see it with different eyes. ( ) Tanya-dogearedcopy | Apr 4, 2013 |
 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. Has the adaptation
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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 Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:46:01 -0500)
Holland comes to dazzling life in this richly imagined portrait of Griet, a sixteen year old of the 1660s who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings.
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