Tracy Chevalier
Author of Girl with a Pearl Earring
About the Author
Tracy Chevalier was born on October 19, 1962 in Washington, D.C. After receiving a B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year-long M.A in creative writing at the University show more of East Anglia. She is the author of several novels including The Virgin Blue, Burning Bright, Remarkable Creatures, and The Last Runaway. Her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Tracy Chevalier
Why Willows Weep: Contemporary Tales from the Woods (2011) — Editor; Contributor — 25 copies, 2 reviews
UEA Creative Writing Anthology: Prose 2009: Fiction, Life-writing and Scriptwriting (2009) — Foreword — 1 copy
Okñda vs̃en 1 copy
Associated Works
The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War (2015) — Contributor — 119 copies, 18 reviews
New Beginnings: New Writing from Bestselling Authors Sold in Aid of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Earthquake Charities (2005) — Contributor — 48 copies
Reader's Digest Select Editions: The Distant Echo | Trojan Odyssey | The Lady and the Unicorn | Blood Is the Sky (2004) — Contributor — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Chevalier, Tracy
- Legal name
- Chevalier, Tracy Rose
- Birthdate
- 1962-10-19
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Oberlin College (B.A. ∙ 1984)
University of East Anglia (M.A. ∙ 1994)
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School - Occupations
- historical novelist
reference book editor - Awards and honors
- Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 2008)
- Agent
- Jonny Geller (Curtis Brown)
- Short biography
- Tracy Chevalier (born October 1962 in Washington, DC) is a bestselling historical novelist. She lives in London with her husband and son.
Chevalier was raised in Washington, D.C and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. After receiving her B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year-long M.A in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Washington, D.C., USA
- Places of residence
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
Ok. I’ll admit it. I bought this book for the cover.
Kinda.
Yes, the cover is what attracted me first, but also the author and finally the description. Back when Chevalier published what I think was her breakout book, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, I read it and a couple of her other books. Then she sort of fell off my bookshelf as sometimes happens. I’m glad to add this one to my set though. It’s a historical fiction novel set in frontier America, albeit a part that isn’t nearly as show more treated or romanticized as some like the Dakotas, prairie states or places in Big Sky country. Instead our hapless family washes up in northwestern Ohio in what is essentially a swamp. Let the wretchedness begin.
The story is told in two main parts; direct narrative from the perspectives of James and Sadie, husband and wife who had to leave Connecticut because there wasn’t enough of James’ family land to go around, with he being a younger son and marrying beneath him. The first Sadie won’t let him forget, the second she believes, too, and it gives her an excuse to undermine him, the family and everything they’re working hard to overcome. Well the family is working, Sadie believes that one of the reasons people have children is to foist off the hardest work to. She’s a wholly unpleasant and surprisingly unsympathetic character. Usually in these kinds of books when there’s a severely put-upon woman who acts the harridan, the writer will suddenly give us some heartbreaking reason for it. In this there is no such magic wand. Sadie is a sociopath through and through and I wished she’d just fall into her jack bottle and stay there.
The other piece of the story comes from letters written by youngest son Robert after he escapes his horror show of a life in Black Swamp. Semi-literate, he writes to his left behind brothers and sisters (ominous that mom and dad are not mentioned). He doesn’t receive a single reply, but keeps on for something like ten years. Now don’t get worried that you’re going to have to wade through hundreds of misspelled letters; you won’t. He writes one a year and sometimes skips years. He’s pretty wayward at first, but finally meets William Lobb, a man who collects plants for a firm in England. Without really meaning to, Lobb hires Robert and begins to teach him about the great trees of California; the Sequoia and the Redwood. Once again, Robert’s life is run by trees; immutable and uncaring, causing his silent awe and devotion to their care.
The two types of trees in the book couldn’t be more different. The highly cultivated and domesticated apple which is the ruin of the Goodenough family. By ending up in swamp, the farming is poor and farming apples made more difficult because James wants eating apples and Sadie wants drinking apples. Neither do well and James has to be diligent in his grafting campaign or else Sadie will rip down the trees out of spite.
Robert’s relationship with the sequoias and redwoods is no less demanding and only affected by humans when he has to pay to be able to collect seeds and saplings. Soon he’s doing this on his own and likes his solitary life among the giants.
It doesn’t last with the arrival of not one, but two pregnant women in his life. I like their depiction and how he handles each of them and the way things end up, despite some more sorrow added onto the heap that had come before. The end was hopeful, which was more than I expected given the grinding misery of the first part. show less
Kinda.
Yes, the cover is what attracted me first, but also the author and finally the description. Back when Chevalier published what I think was her breakout book, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, I read it and a couple of her other books. Then she sort of fell off my bookshelf as sometimes happens. I’m glad to add this one to my set though. It’s a historical fiction novel set in frontier America, albeit a part that isn’t nearly as show more treated or romanticized as some like the Dakotas, prairie states or places in Big Sky country. Instead our hapless family washes up in northwestern Ohio in what is essentially a swamp. Let the wretchedness begin.
The story is told in two main parts; direct narrative from the perspectives of James and Sadie, husband and wife who had to leave Connecticut because there wasn’t enough of James’ family land to go around, with he being a younger son and marrying beneath him. The first Sadie won’t let him forget, the second she believes, too, and it gives her an excuse to undermine him, the family and everything they’re working hard to overcome. Well the family is working, Sadie believes that one of the reasons people have children is to foist off the hardest work to. She’s a wholly unpleasant and surprisingly unsympathetic character. Usually in these kinds of books when there’s a severely put-upon woman who acts the harridan, the writer will suddenly give us some heartbreaking reason for it. In this there is no such magic wand. Sadie is a sociopath through and through and I wished she’d just fall into her jack bottle and stay there.
The other piece of the story comes from letters written by youngest son Robert after he escapes his horror show of a life in Black Swamp. Semi-literate, he writes to his left behind brothers and sisters (ominous that mom and dad are not mentioned). He doesn’t receive a single reply, but keeps on for something like ten years. Now don’t get worried that you’re going to have to wade through hundreds of misspelled letters; you won’t. He writes one a year and sometimes skips years. He’s pretty wayward at first, but finally meets William Lobb, a man who collects plants for a firm in England. Without really meaning to, Lobb hires Robert and begins to teach him about the great trees of California; the Sequoia and the Redwood. Once again, Robert’s life is run by trees; immutable and uncaring, causing his silent awe and devotion to their care.
The two types of trees in the book couldn’t be more different. The highly cultivated and domesticated apple which is the ruin of the Goodenough family. By ending up in swamp, the farming is poor and farming apples made more difficult because James wants eating apples and Sadie wants drinking apples. Neither do well and James has to be diligent in his grafting campaign or else Sadie will rip down the trees out of spite.
Robert’s relationship with the sequoias and redwoods is no less demanding and only affected by humans when he has to pay to be able to collect seeds and saplings. Soon he’s doing this on his own and likes his solitary life among the giants.
It doesn’t last with the arrival of not one, but two pregnant women in his life. I like their depiction and how he handles each of them and the way things end up, despite some more sorrow added onto the heap that had come before. The end was hopeful, which was more than I expected given the grinding misery of the first part. show less
Commissioned for Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary, Reader, I Married Him is a celebration of her most famous creation, Jane Eyre, and the themes of ‘love, compromise and self-determination’ embodied by the eponymous heroine. Tracy Chevalier and twenty of today’s most talented and award-winning female authors, including Emma Donoghue, Susan Hill and Audrey Niffenegger, have contributed stories which either reimagine the original novel from a new perspective or gain fresh inspiration show more from the timeless drama of weddings and marriage.
Whether Jane Eyre is your bible or merely another Brontë bestseller, this collection of short stories should appeal to all readers. For devotees of Charlotte’s novel, Helen Dunmore, Francine Prose, Salley Vickers and Audrey Niffenegger have taken aspects of the original in alternative directions with a second look at the characters through modern eyes. What is Grace Poole’s version of events and what does she really think of Jane (‘She came in meek and mild but I knew her at first glance’)? ‘Reader, I married him’ – but could Jane ever be happy with a man like Rochester (‘Marry someone, drive her mad, burn the house down, marry someone else. Repeat’)? And in Salley Vickers’ ‘Reader, She Married Me’, Rochester has his ‘own version of events’.
If, like Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, you haven’t read Jane Eyre in years, or like Susan Hill, not at all, then there could be no better introduction to Charlotte’s headstrong governess. Jane’s passionate declaration of ‘Reader, I married him’ links all aspects of the story together, quoting from the original novel while occasionally changing – and challenging – the intended meaning. For the women in Joanna Briscoe’s ‘To Hold’ and Emma Donoghue’s ‘Since First I Saw Your Face’, marriage is a sentence – ‘Reader, I married him because I had to’ – while the words and the narrator are reversed in Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Dorset Gap’ – ‘Reader, she married me’.
Like the authors themselves, inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ambition and imagination’, the stories are all told by women but vary in style and setting. A young girl from Turkey falls in love with an exchange student, an independent widow living alone in the Canadian mountains is the envy of a married woman, marriage as a ‘mash-up’ between cultures, and an African wedding. The unconventional romance in Emma Donoghue’s story is based upon the historical diaries of Mary Benson, who gave her heart to women while married to a man of God, whereas Susan Hill’s famous real-life narrator can indeed claim to have married the man she loved – but at a price. My favourite, though, would have to be Francine Prose’s ‘The Mirror’, a wry and witty revision of Jane Eyre in which the heroine acknowledges not only the reader, but the novel too. A fitting tribute to an author who pushed the boundaries of fiction and created one of literature’s most enduring and beloved heroines. show less
Whether Jane Eyre is your bible or merely another Brontë bestseller, this collection of short stories should appeal to all readers. For devotees of Charlotte’s novel, Helen Dunmore, Francine Prose, Salley Vickers and Audrey Niffenegger have taken aspects of the original in alternative directions with a second look at the characters through modern eyes. What is Grace Poole’s version of events and what does she really think of Jane (‘She came in meek and mild but I knew her at first glance’)? ‘Reader, I married him’ – but could Jane ever be happy with a man like Rochester (‘Marry someone, drive her mad, burn the house down, marry someone else. Repeat’)? And in Salley Vickers’ ‘Reader, She Married Me’, Rochester has his ‘own version of events’.
If, like Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, you haven’t read Jane Eyre in years, or like Susan Hill, not at all, then there could be no better introduction to Charlotte’s headstrong governess. Jane’s passionate declaration of ‘Reader, I married him’ links all aspects of the story together, quoting from the original novel while occasionally changing – and challenging – the intended meaning. For the women in Joanna Briscoe’s ‘To Hold’ and Emma Donoghue’s ‘Since First I Saw Your Face’, marriage is a sentence – ‘Reader, I married him because I had to’ – while the words and the narrator are reversed in Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Dorset Gap’ – ‘Reader, she married me’.
Like the authors themselves, inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s ‘ambition and imagination’, the stories are all told by women but vary in style and setting. A young girl from Turkey falls in love with an exchange student, an independent widow living alone in the Canadian mountains is the envy of a married woman, marriage as a ‘mash-up’ between cultures, and an African wedding. The unconventional romance in Emma Donoghue’s story is based upon the historical diaries of Mary Benson, who gave her heart to women while married to a man of God, whereas Susan Hill’s famous real-life narrator can indeed claim to have married the man she loved – but at a price. My favourite, though, would have to be Francine Prose’s ‘The Mirror’, a wry and witty revision of Jane Eyre in which the heroine acknowledges not only the reader, but the novel too. A fitting tribute to an author who pushed the boundaries of fiction and created one of literature’s most enduring and beloved heroines. show less
Being so far advanced in terms of paleontology from the setting here, it's amazing anyone had to wrestle with the idea of extinction, but wrestle they did. On the Origin of Species had yet to be published, but you can see the evidence for natural selection with every fossil found. Literal bones of creatures never seen by humans made everyone have fits to the point of willful denials and wishful thinking. The idea that "god" didn't keep track of every creature and especially cherishing humans show more was unthinkable despite the rise of Deism and the Enlightenment giving way to more flexible ideas. Sigh. In many ways we haven't progressed at all and so many are still bound by superstition and ignorance. But anyway...about the book. I like the way the story is told and the wry humor in Elizabeth's thoughts and observations. Both she and Mary Anning were real life historical figures, but because they lacked dangly bits (oh so important those) they were ignored, shunted aside, taken advantage of and ultimately forgotten. Very glad for Chevalier's research to bring them back to life in this way. show less
Enjoyed this more than I expected. The pursuant, Jack Wells, is so contrived and his encounters with the main character Violet Speedwell so unlikely that it showed its flaws starkly, but sometimes I quite like that - as with Ian McEwen's plots. Chevalier's own plot in this book is a bit wayward, but it was a great romp to relax with and read when I was laid up in bed for a day. It's the second book Ipicked up for its embroidery, and I enjoyed learning about Louisa Pesel and the Winchester show more broderers - the more so because they're real, and I've since discovered that there's an interesting early piece of stumpwork by a fella in the Winchester College archives.
I wasn't expecting the solo walking holiday, but that part resonated with me. I walk a lot in the Highlands alone, and I always felt fine there, threatened only by white-outs and crags and dependent on my own navigation skills. But walking in more populated areas like Sussex, I've had some frightening encounters with predatory blokes because footpaths through fields and woods are far too accessible to ne'er-do-wells. Violet's rising terror, and analysis of her situation ("he wasn't a smiler"), part fear, part introspective private humour, sounded very like the voice in my own head. All her thoughts were a pleasure to read: her pathetic need for the broderers' company, her need to produce something bautiful and leave a mark, her romantic interest in kindly older Arthur, her uncertainty about her stance with the gay couple, and her grass-is-greener responses to being anywhere (!) were fun, together with her actual strengths standing up to her employer or knowing when to cut Arthur loose, wrapped in her general feeling of humility.
Not a great story, like Girl with a Parl Earring, but a worthwhile novel that made for a fun distraction and a nice bit of textile history. show less
I wasn't expecting the solo walking holiday, but that part resonated with me. I walk a lot in the Highlands alone, and I always felt fine there, threatened only by white-outs and crags and dependent on my own navigation skills. But walking in more populated areas like Sussex, I've had some frightening encounters with predatory blokes because footpaths through fields and woods are far too accessible to ne'er-do-wells. Violet's rising terror, and analysis of her situation ("he wasn't a smiler"), part fear, part introspective private humour, sounded very like the voice in my own head. All her thoughts were a pleasure to read: her pathetic need for the broderers' company, her need to produce something bautiful and leave a mark, her romantic interest in kindly older Arthur, her uncertainty about her stance with the gay couple, and her grass-is-greener responses to being anywhere (!) were fun, together with her actual strengths standing up to her employer or knowing when to cut Arthur loose, wrapped in her general feeling of humility.
Not a great story, like Girl with a Parl Earring, but a worthwhile novel that made for a fun distraction and a nice bit of textile history. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 27
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 43,095
- Popularity
- #395
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 1,408
- ISBNs
- 750
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- 29
- Favorited
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