The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of Remarkable Creatures and The Last Runaway Translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth
Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer’s most celebrated paintings.
… inspired one of Vermeer’s most celebrated paintings.
History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius . . . even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.
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Enjoyed it
Interesting book.
A beautiful representation of a specific historical family and the daily routine of an artist. Of course it is better than the movie, but they do complement each other.
Interesting book with believable characters. A little different scenario than what I usually read.
This is the story of Griet. She is a 16 year old girl who is hired as a maid for the Vermeer family in 1664. Her father was recently blinded, so Griet needs to make money to help her family. One of her main tasks in the household was to clean Johannes Vermeer’s studio. While doing so, she becomes fascinated in his paintings and the women he paints. Johannes soon enlists Griet’s help in getting his supplies and mixing his paints, and then finally – asks to paint her. She becomes the girl with the pearl earring. Her time as a maid in this household is tumultuous- one of the daughters constantly tries to get Griet in trouble, the other help in the household become jealous of her relationship with Johannes, and she develops an unwanted admirer. The lines start to bleed between master and servant to the point that Griet needs to make a difficult choice.
This was a pretty good book. I listened to it, and I was worried that it might be slow or dry. IT was neither. I can say there wasn’t incredible character development, and the story was pretty low key. But I liked the idea of an author taking a real person (Vermeer) and a real painting (The Girl With A Pearl Earring) and develop a fictional story around it. Nothing is known about Vermeer’s muses, and I felt that her idea of what lead to him painting this particular picture was an interesting one.
Good read. I need to now watch the movie and then seek out the painting.
I loved this story! I would recommend it to anyone.
This book takes you into the lives of people in the 17th century Netherlands. Amazingly well written and researched.
A simple teenaged girl from a poor family is forced into service in a more prosperous 17th-Century Delft household. Other than the Dutch setting, this could be the start of a Dickensian tale of working-class woe or yet another BBC soap opera about the downstairs help. But instead of a grasping capitalist, historical fiction writer Tracy Chevalier made the master of the house one Johannes Vermeer, one of the greatest Dutch Golden Age artists. This leads the story in a very different — and welcome — direction.
Our heroine Griet is sixteen when he (the way she refers to Vermeer throughout) and his perpetually pregnant wife Catharina appear in her family’s kitchen and grudgingly hire her to be a maid. From that early point, we know exactly what’s going to happen — somewhere down the road, Griet will become the eponymous Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of Vermeer’s most famous works. The story is the how of this improbable outcome.
Chevalier tells the story through Griet’s eyes and words. It’s a potentially risky choice: how do you put yourself in the head of a 17th-century teenager? The reviews show that her solution is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. Other reviewers have called Griet stupid and naïve and have complained about the simple language and straightforwardness of her narration. I, for one, found these things entirely in character. Few adults in the 17th Century were as worldly as the typical American teenager is today; girls in particular were sheltered from the world, barely educated, and went directly from their fathers’ arms to their husbands’ with no chance to be their own selves. It’s unlikely that a girl like Griet would ever leave Delft, a small, provincial town in a small nation. I could persuade myself that the narrator was a bright, observant, but unschooled and sheltered small-town girl suddenly thrust into a strange and vaguely threatening environment and told to sink or swim.
We come to see the settings through an accretion of detail rather than (the historical’s common vice) huge stretches of description. Also in character, Griet describes the things that are new or strange to her; we know more about Vermeer’s house than we do her own, for instance. She reports on clothes, hair, and jewelry as we might expect, and as someone who’s gone hungry for a while, she shows a great interest in food.
And — as we might also expect — she nourishes a crush on the dashing, creative, kind, and somewhat mysterious Vermeer. Other reviewers complain that the artist is as much an enigma at the end of the book as at the start. This makes sense, though; a servant in his house would never be allowed to learn about his thoughts or feelings, his business dealings, or his wants or needs (except in connection to food or clean clothes). It’s only because Griet has an eye for color and composition that he pays as much attention to her as he does, and that he slowly draws her into his work.
Unfortunately, Chevalier allows many of the supporting characters to be and stay types: Catharina is a spendthrift, over-fertile bitch; Vermeer’s principal patron van Ruijven is a lecher and sot; Vermeer’s daughter Cornelia is a vicious schemer; and so on. Very few of the characters get anything like an arc. I can’t tell if this is because the author felt handcuffed inside Griet’s head and couldn’t get the scullery maid to notice subtle changes in these characters, or she was simply too focused on Griet’s journey down the road set out for her on page 1. Whatever it is, it knocked a full star off the rating.
Girl With a Pearl Earring could probably be accused of being a literary historical novel: there are no big stakes, nothing huge happens, and we stay firmly embedded in the narrator’s head. At the same time, it’s a very easy read — I finished it in a single afternoon and didn’t feel like opening a vein. A teen reader tired of high-school sturm und drang might enjoy spending a few hours watching the life of her counterpart from 350 years ago. It may also help to be interested in art or to have a pre-existing connection with Vermeer. It’s easy to see why this book made the author famous; if you haven’t run across Chevalier before, this is an easy way to get to make her acquaintance.
Loved this story! Well written!
I read and taught this book years ago and still love it. Other works by the author are also great–though not all enticed me. I love historical fiction.
Loved this book.
This is one of my very favorite books! The writing is rich!
A very simple writing style makes this a really light and easy read. Nothing life-changing or mind-blowing – just a good basic story. Good for beaches and flights!
I am a little biased since the Vermeer painting of the same name captures my attention like few other paintings I have ever seen. My eyes just swim in it. Obviously, I am not alone.
But while I am captivated by the woman’s eyes, the author, Tracey Chevalier, must have been consumed by them. Not surprisingly, the author writes her historical novel like she was there in 1664 Holland, and I can’t give her a better compliment than that.
I am also partial to this novel because the author gives the painted woman life. We know Vermeer’s painting and his brilliance, but we don’t know anything about the subject he painted nor if he was a good or bad man himself. It’s an intriguing premise. In this novel, the woman is no longer merely an object of desire but a fleshed-out human being, flaws and all. It’s like watching an Instagram Influencer create a beautiful photograph of herself and share the moment on social media. What happens after she puts away the camera? Is she just as happy as she was in the photo? Does her smile fall flat? The same goes for this painting. Does the woman’s look of innocence change once the artist puts down his brush? Because of this novel, one of the most famous unnamed women in history now has a name, Griet, and better yet, a coming of age story.
It begins when 16-year-old Griet has to leave her home when her father gets blinded in an accident and cannot work. Indebted, he pays his debt through his daughter, and she must live in Vermeer’s household as a maid. Vermeer’s sensuous talent naturally attracts the young Griet to his studio. While there, she develops a talent for mixing colour for Vermeer’s paints and soon gains a deeper appreciation of his art. Meanwhile, Vermeer is stuck in an artistic rut, and his household suffers. Art means food on the table, and even though they are aristocratic, they live beyond their means. But Vermeer is only inspired to paint when a licentious patron fixates on Griet, and Vermeer strikes a bargain with the man to paint her as a means to protect her. This temporary fix results in a cost to all. The wife’s cost is having Griet around her husband when she senses her husband wants something more. The cost to Vermeer is to paint for a man he abhors. The cost to Griet, who has no stature in this house, is far worse. Forced to navigate a world of jealousy, pettiness, and regret, she must walk a fine line between suffering and loneliness, contentment and belonging. The choice she makes affects them all. While the pearl earrings she wears in the painting plays a part, it is not what you think. Her eyes tell you more.
Check it out.
I really enjoyed learning about the history of the artist, his subject, and the world in which they lived.
This is a beautifully written book with an exquisite cover!!!
Very entertaining story. Great pick for those of us who love historical fiction. If I could rate the book in smaller increments, I’d give it a 3.9.
Recommended it highly to friends and family. Plus, I like Dutch paintings, so the reference to those was appreciated.
I love this painting and for that reason alone I was curious to read it. It did not disappoint. The “heroine” of the story was equally engaging and confounding as you follow her story to it’s conclusion.
First, the book isn’t very true to the story of Vermeer. The author does create some of the sense of Vermeer’s world, but much is not especially accurate. I much preferred “The Girl in Hyacinth Blue” if you want a book centered on a Vermeer painting. That book was very good.