Why I chose to read this book:1. a GR friend's review encouraged me to add this book to my WTR list;2. since I recently read a different HF with a Dutch setting, this book went right up to the top of my list; and,3. September 2022 is "Historical Fiction Month" for me.Praise (only one!):Another story based on a piece of artwork (think A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline)! Author Tracy Chevalier's research effectively took me back in time to the Dutch Golden Age of the 1600s. I felt like...

Vermeer's famous painting, The Girl with a Pearl Earring, allows Tracy Chevalier to imagine a special relationship between the painter and Griet, a young and pretty servant committed to the family's service. Unfortunately, proximity could make one think that the young servant served as a model for the painter of the painting, arousing Vermeer's wife's jealousy and causing a scandal in Delft in the 17th century.Well, it captured the painter's universe and the Dutch society of his time; I agree wi...

"Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier was an interesting historical fiction concept!It was extremely cleverly how the author created Griet as the protagonist, maid and model for the famous painting 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. No one knows who the models were for any of Vermeer's paintings. So, I applaud this author's imaginative use of creating a story around the Master Painter's exquisite painting.Forced by her parents to become a maid to the Vermeer household, Griet is saddened to le...

A reread. 4.5 Stars!Griet had not been told that she is to become the painter Vermeer’s maid, her mother only revealing the job to her after the Vermeer’s had already been, inspected Griet, and left. Griet has no say in the matter. Her father was a tile painter before a tragic accident, in which a kiln explosion claimed his eyes and trade. The family who were already struggling, treading water, now find themselves slowly slipping beneath the surface.Her father explains to Griet that she is to be...

I approached this novel trepidatiously. How could I ever suspend my disbelief with this work? How could I ever believe such a ridiculous tale about Vermeer and one of his most revered paintings? I must admit that I opened this novel expecting to utterly detest the lies it weaves. By page two I realised that I was an idiot who should never be listened to. Griet is hired as a maid to the Vermeer family in Delft. This novel supposes that Griet the maid was the sitter for Vermeer's great work Girl w...

“I heard voices outside our front door - a woman's, bright as polished brass, and a man's, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.” The Girl With the Pearl EarringWhen the Vermeers came to visit Griet’s home she had no idea they were there for her. Her parents had decided, given their near destitution, to find Griet a position as a maid with a weal...

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest I have read this book so many times. And even after re-reading this book so many times, it is and will always remain one of my favourite books, a story that is evergreen and has such an emotional story worth retelling. Tracy Chevalier has been inspired by the artwork of Johannes Vermeer, and his most famous painting, the Girl with a Pearl Earring, that she decided to write a story of what she believes might have happened behind that painting...

So the parts when Vermeer was actually being a painter were interesting. Seeing as I slogged through this on account of a recommendation that arose from an art-class lecture on Vermeer, I was hoping that the art stuff would at least deliver. But it's not a good sign when a book's most compelling moments revolve around two people grinding pigments. And, no: "Grinding pigments" is not a euphemism for artist-bangin'. It is, quite literally, referring to the detailed descriptions of how paint was ma...

I know almost nothing about art, but even I can tell that Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer is a brilliant painting; 'captivating' is probably the best word to describe it. One presumes that Chevalier agrees with me, and this is what lead her to write a novel about the painting, its subject and its creator. So, is the novel as captivating as the piece that inspired it?The short answer would be 'no'.Now for the longer answer...Chevalier is probably one of the best-known historical nov...

Another one of my wife's recommendations (I read a lot of books that way), I picked it up from the bookshelf the night we came back from seeing the film with Scarlett Johansonn and Colin Firth. I loved the movie--it was just so incredibly sumptuous--and was curious to know the story in the novel, which I knew from experience, and from my wife's continuous comments, would be different, more detailed. I was right.Chevalier has won a place in my heart and bookshelf. Her novels are well-crafted, sim...