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I went into this book hoping for an interesting read, nothing more. I have a BA in art history, and have studied art of the Dutch Golden Age in depth. However, I was not looking for a book to be accurate, or even very much about Vermeer. I just wanted a good story. This book isn’t even palatable.
Griet, the narrator, is completely insufferable. She is full of contradictions, and not in the complex character way one would expect in a well written book—instead, she seems a collection of rather unrelated personality traits that barely hold together under the pressure of this novel. Griet manages to be completely naive and annoyingly worldly at the same time. She is somehow very humble, yet is about as arrogant and condescending as can be. She somehow is both modest and religious, yet remains in a state of sexual arousal for a married man for years on end. She is an unskilled, uneducated maid, but somehow has a better artistic eye than one of the most skilled artists to ever paint, and has to help him arrange his paintings. Her telling of the story seems so dramatic and over-wrought that it is hard to focus on anything but poor Griet and her drama most of the time.
Even if Griet weren’t a complete turn-off, the rest of the novel would be. Other characters (with the sole exception of Maria Thins) are equally as confused and poorly written. Most characters seem to be thinly disguised motivations or plot devices, and at times I started to wonder if something much more philosophical was going on. Symbolism is laid on to an almost farcical extent—spinning knives, for example—and the build-up of plot moves from painfully slow to unsatisfying brisk. The climax seems completely rushed, and is somehow boring in both its blandness and predictability. The final portion of the story, set ten years later, seems to exist more as a bizarre plot twist and Mary Sue…I mean Griet getting even with everybody than as an integral part of the story. While the world it took place in seemed rather meticulously researched, it was presented in such a way that you almost felt the author was smacking you across the face with it—for example, a handful of articles of clothing were really well researched, but those were the only clothing mentioned and each was brought up a half dozen times in detail. Griet’s bonnet is accurate and wonderfully described. Nearly every woman would have worn a bonnet in 17th century Delft, but not once is anyone else’s headgear mentioned—excepting one passing reference to a pair of hats, and a comment on a man wearing a hat (as a way of identification). Yet since Griet’s bonnet was both an important symbol and plot device, we heard more about it than we could ever want.
This book read like something an immature, first-time writer would create in an early draft—it has the elements of a good work, but lacks refinement, consistency, or a more advanced sense of style. I would expect this of a teenage girl who had watched the movie Secretary a dozen times, not by a (at least by reputation) talented author like Tracy Chevalier. I’ve seen the defense of many of these criticisms that Chevalier was leaving things intentionally vague given the lack of information about Vermeer’s life, but I don’t buy that. I've also seen that Chevalier was trying to create something other than a typical romance story of an artist falling in love with his muse/master of the house taking advantage of a maid. In the end, however, that is exactly what she wrote, and if she had just gone about it in the traditional way, it might have actually been interesting. I think this is a poorly written romance novel that uses a fig leaf of art history for publicity.
In short—don’t read it. Read just about anything historical fiction instead. Pick a title at random, it is bound to be better.
Griet, the narrator, is completely insufferable. She is full of contradictions, and not in the complex character way one would expect in a well written book—instead, she seems a collection of rather unrelated personality traits that barely hold together under the pressure of this novel. Griet manages to be completely naive and annoyingly worldly at the same time. She is somehow very humble, yet is about as arrogant and condescending as can be. She somehow is both modest and religious, yet remains in a state of sexual arousal for a married man for years on end. She is an unskilled, uneducated maid, but somehow has a better artistic eye than one of the most skilled artists to ever paint, and has to help him arrange his paintings. Her telling of the story seems so dramatic and over-wrought that it is hard to focus on anything but poor Griet and her drama most of the time.
Even if Griet weren’t a complete turn-off, the rest of the novel would be. Other characters (with the sole exception of Maria Thins) are equally as confused and poorly written. Most characters seem to be thinly disguised motivations or plot devices, and at times I started to wonder if something much more philosophical was going on. Symbolism is laid on to an almost farcical extent—spinning knives, for example—and the build-up of plot moves from painfully slow to unsatisfying brisk. The climax seems completely rushed, and is somehow boring in both its blandness and predictability. The final portion of the story, set ten years later, seems to exist more as a bizarre plot twist and Mary Sue…I mean Griet getting even with everybody than as an integral part of the story. While the world it took place in seemed rather meticulously researched, it was presented in such a way that you almost felt the author was smacking you across the face with it—for example, a handful of articles of clothing were really well researched, but those were the only clothing mentioned and each was brought up a half dozen times in detail. Griet’s bonnet is accurate and wonderfully described. Nearly every woman would have worn a bonnet in 17th century Delft, but not once is anyone else’s headgear mentioned—excepting one passing reference to a pair of hats, and a comment on a man wearing a hat (as a way of identification). Yet since Griet’s bonnet was both an important symbol and plot device, we heard more about it than we could ever want.
This book read like something an immature, first-time writer would create in an early draft—it has the elements of a good work, but lacks refinement, consistency, or a more advanced sense of style. I would expect this of a teenage girl who had watched the movie Secretary a dozen times, not by a (at least by reputation) talented author like Tracy Chevalier. I’ve seen the defense of many of these criticisms that Chevalier was leaving things intentionally vague given the lack of information about Vermeer’s life, but I don’t buy that. I've also seen that Chevalier was trying to create something other than a typical romance story of an artist falling in love with his muse/master of the house taking advantage of a maid. In the end, however, that is exactly what she wrote, and if she had just gone about it in the traditional way, it might have actually been interesting. I think this is a poorly written romance novel that uses a fig leaf of art history for publicity.
In short—don’t read it. Read just about anything historical fiction instead. Pick a title at random, it is bound to be better.
