Sometimes it's those little books that you find on the discount shelf for $2 that are the best. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into with this book, I had never heard of these tapestries before I read the book.
The books mixes the fiction and the history incredibly well so well that I found myself looking up the names to see if they were purely fiction or had actually lived. The main character, aside from the tapestries themselves, Nicolas de Innocents is the painter of the original pieces that the tapestries will be made from and the book follows his escapades from Paris and his almost romance with the man who's commissioning the tapestries daughter and then in Brussels to the daughter of the weaver of the tapesteries. It's a bouncing narrative which changes from chapter to chapter but this is one of those books in which the transistions are done so incredibly well. And this story that Chevalier that builds around these pieces of art will definitely make you look at the tapestries differently. Beautiful novel.

3.5 stars. I really liked the description of the weaving process of the Flemish tapestries, starting with the drawings, the daily lives of artisans and nobles, and to imagine life in Brussels at that time. I kept this book so I could read it while visiting the city and it was great to visit some of the places described in it. This being said, I would have liked the book to have more historical information and less romance, which at times even seemed a bit cheesy...

Weaving, tapestries, and unicorns – by an author I enjoyed previously. What could go wrong? Not everything, fortunately, but … parts of the story and many of the characters came up lacking. I learned things about weaving tapestries, however, so not a complete loss.

A quote that caught my eye

Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wines. Their work is not obvious—all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren’t there, there would be no tapestry. (113)

Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!
I found Lady and the Unicorn even better than Girl with a Pearl Earring. I felt utterly transported to the middle ages and immersed in a very good tale, immaculately told.
As she did with The Girl With the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier takes a classic work of art and artfully spins a tale inspired by the original which becomes an original itself.
It was specially fascinating living among the Brussels weavers and coming to understand the magnitude of their task. One almost feels their physical discomfort and certainly the realities of a labor intensive craft. It was the part of the book I most enjoyed.
Next time I go to Paris I will not miss the Cluny Museum to see the tapestries for myself!
Meanwhile we can see them (in full size) at VanderNat's home page or at Tracy Chevalier's official site

One of the most beautifull books I have ever read :)
Now on I will look for the color blue in old tapestries with 'other eyes'. ;)

Tu la ce gândești atunci când cineva aduce în discuție tema Evului Mediu?

Ceea ce mă fascinează la această perioadă este arta, în special tapiseriile de dimensiuni impresionante, ce împodobeau pereții privilegiaților de viță nobilă.

O știți pe scriitoarea George Sand? Ei bine, femeia a descoperit într-o stare de deteriorare avansată, un set de șase tapiserii înfățișând o femeie cu un inorog, ulterior fiind restaurate și expuse la muzeul Cluny din Paris.

Și pentru că aceste tapiserii sunt de un detaliu și o frumusețe uluitoare, mulți experți au încercat să descrifreze mesajul din spatele acestei creații, nereușind însă în totalitate. Interpretarea exactă și mesajul transmis este pierdut pentru totdeauna în faldurile timpului.

Pornind de la acest "mister" Tracy Chevalier țese pe pânza literară, o intrigă a tapiseriilor, capabilă să cucerească cititorul încă de la primul capitol. Pictorul Nicolas des Innocents ( să știți că nu era el chiar așa de inocent

The Lady and the Unicorn is a historical fiction creation about the famed the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries. The story bounces from Paris to Brussels, all centered on the design and creation of these tapestries, and has seven different narrators. I chose to read it for my Belgium book for #BackpackEurope since about half of it is set in Brussels.

Like her book Girl with a Pearl Earring, this one is also based on actual art. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are currently housed at the Musee national du Moyen-Age (Musee Cluny) in Paris. The basis for the story is that there little is known about who had the tapestries made, and less known about the designer or weaver(s). The details about process of designing and and weaving a tapestry are the strongest parts of the book. It is clear the author did a good bit of research.

The book also does an okay job of explaining the the cultural and social norms of the times. She gets a bit into the artist guilds and how the guilds controlled much of the art of the time. She spends a bit more time on relationship of women to men and nobles to artists to commoners. But while she touches on these, she really only ever skims the surface, keeping to shallow explanation only as need to explain certain aspects of the story.

It is the lack of depth that keeps this book from being a stronger read. First there are seven narrators. That's right, 7 different points of view. When done right, this can work well, but it's a tricky thing to do. Here, not so much. There was little difference between each of the voices—they all kind of ran together. Of course, part of this stemmed from the lack of depth. While some characters had hints of interesting backstories, particularly the two mothers (Christine and Genevieve), none of the characters were developed enough. They all were rather flat and lifeless, or in the case of Nicolas, a boring caricature with one focus.

Sex (or as she referred to it, "plowing" or losing one's "maidenhead") played a bit too heavily into this story for my taste. It seemed that's all the narrators were really focused on, to the point it became blase. Sexual trysts, again when done well, might add something to a story. But here, it seemed everyone was just plain randy all the time. It got a bit old, especially with Nicolas.

The upside was it was a rather easy read and did keep me moderately entertained. 3 stars for entertainment.

I enjoyed this book but did' not care much for the protagonist, the womanising and arrogant artist , Nicholas DE Innocents, but this is also about a noble Parisian family and a Brussels tradesman and his family in the late 15th century. An essay on relations between men and woman at they type, and a lot of symbolism between the characters in the book and the figures of the tapestry which is commissioned by a Parisian nobleman.
Something to learn about tapestry making but does not deal with it in the same detail that say Irving Stone dealt marble in The Agony and The Ecstasy.
Tracy Chevalier is a brilliant word-smith who brings to life the sights and sounds and emotions and activities of the period pieces she specializes in. Her novel written after this Burning Bright is even better than this one

I liked this book but didn’t love it. It had moments. I found the characters hard to get close to. The writing seemed to lack the flow that keeps you reading when you’re not supposed to. Perhaps due to the different points of view in every chapter.

What the fuck did I just read ? Did Tracy Chevalier really write the Girl with a pearl earring ? Was the Girl with a pearl earring actually a good book or was I just deluding myself?

As you can see, The lady and the unicorn was so tremendously horrible it fully sent me spiralling. I finished the whole book in a day, not because it was good but because I just needed it to be over so I could run straight to Goodreads and bash it like it deserves to be bashed. Seriously, no wonder the publisher was giving this one out for free because no one sane should ever pay money to experience the actual trauma that is reading this book.

First, this horrid nonsense needs several trigger warnings yet it doesn’t have any ? You can’t just write about a grown man leeching on every women he meets and trying to have sex with a 14 years old, let alone talk about her in ways so graphically disgusting they rival FUCKING LOLITA, and not put a trigger warning anywhere. I swear to god if he started calling her anything akin to « fire of my loin » I would have needed to burn sage to cleanse my home… I don’t give a flying fuck this is set in the medieval times, it certainly wasn’t published in the 15th century so as far as I’m concerned it should include trigger warnings for its extremely creepy sexual content, allusions to depression and self harm as well as the fact it treats a relationship between an obvious child and a full grown man as a legitimate love story - I got into this book thinking I’d learn about a tapestry, not a predator! It boils my blood just thinking about it.

Secondly, The lady and the unicorn might be the worst written book I have ever read. Seriously. I couldn’t keep count of the number of times the narrator went “*Name of a character* did something. *still name of the same character* was like this”. Did Tracy Chevalier unlearn what pronouns were after writing The girl with a pearl earring ? Synonyms? I hardly know her apparently. No one calls anyone anything besides their names or truly tasteful nicknames, not only in dialog but in the narration as well - was this an attempt at emulating Medieval speech patterns or something that got lost in translation? Honestly I have no idea, but The lady and the unicorn probably has some of the blandest, beigest, most pedantic writing I have ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on; I’ve read books meant for children with infinitely better prose. I reckon half of the page count is just information dump delivered in the absolute most uncreative and uninspired manner an author could ever muster. It baffles me a book can actually be this horribly written without having Onision’s name on the cover… I might actually need to read Stones to Abigail to find a novel worst than this one. I’d much rather reread the Selection than be put through this depressing water-flavoured nothing experience.

Thirdly, I hated every single character besides the blind girl whose’s name I have forgotten. I won’t even touch on the writing of her disability because I don’t want to talk out of turn, but what I can certainly talk about is the misogyny imbued in every aspect of this novel. The main character, the absolute dirtbag behind the tapestry, is the grossest little manipulative shit I have ever had the misfortune of reading about. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE manipulative characters - I could lovingly praise the Darkling or Amy Dunn for days on end. I also think there’s a merit and a lot of potential in writing a truly disgustingly sexist character who has about as much empathy as Patrick Bateman. Everything comes down to framing and writing skills, things Chevalier is clearly struggling with here. While I believe Nicolas is supposed to have grown through the story from womanising nightmare of a human being into someone who can really see the individual qualities of the women around him and empathise with the pain his oppressively patriarchal society is causing them, it doesn’t not feel subtle and is rather unconvincing. While his perception of women may have SLIGHTLY progressed through the novel, it is still way too little to even approach something worthy of being considered a character arc; he stills behaves in a sleazy and dishonest manner towards women, still desires mostly sex from them and still doesn’t mind exploiting the power he possesses to secure sexual fulfilment. He pays prostitutes for sex from beginning to the end, sees no issues in trying to pursue a relationship with a clueless 14 years old and takes advantage of the desperation of a disabled girl to have sex with her. Worst, while he’s been pestering her for sex and harassing her since he’s met her, him having sex with her so she doesn’t end up married to another somehow worst prick is framed as an almost heroic act of kindness. Even worst yet, while she’s shown nothing but distastes towards him until this point (rightfully so), the poor thing suddenly has a change of heart and is now very much into him as well as more than willing to continue their “love affair” for an extended period of time. All the women in this novel end up different level of miserable, which worked very well in The girl with the pearl earring but absolutely rubs me the wrong way here considering there’s so many female POV characters and not even one gets a happy ending.

Honestly, this book reads a lot like Lolita, just without the beautiful imaged prose and the reassurance it is written from the point of view of a severely delusional unreliable narrator. Instead of reading about a clueless young girl suffering through men’s whims and burning her wings like Icarus flying too close to the sun, it feels as though you are listening to the apologist tale of the scumbags who took advantage of said young girl and the person who’s written them down, some sort of metaphorical LeFou, truly believes they are indeed great mens who couldn’t help but be seduced by the underage girls. Yikes.

Η ιστορία της δημιουργίας των 6 διάσημων tapisserie, με το γενικό τίτλο Η ΚΥΡΙΑ ΚΑΙ Ο ΜΟΝΟΚΕΡΟΣ, που σήμερα κοσμούν το Μουσείο Cluny (Εθνικό Μουσείο του Μεσαίωνα) στο Παρίσι, αναπλάθεται μυθιστορηματικά μέσα από τις εξομολογήσεις των μελών δύο οικογενειών: αυτής του παραγγελιοδόχου, γάλλου ευγενή αξιωματούχου του βασιλιά, και αυτής του φλαμανδού υφαντουργού κατασκευαστή της από τις Βρυξέλλες. Σφήνα, ο παριζιάνος ζωγράφος που έκανε τα 6 σχέδια, το πρόσωπο που θα σημαδέψει τις ζωές πολλών γυναικών της ιστορίας. Η γυναικεία ματιά της συγγραφέως αναδεικνύει πολλά ζητήματα σχετικά με την αέναη πάλη των γυναικών να επιλέξουν το δρόμο τους μέσα σε έναν ανδροκρατούμενο κόσμο.
Προσωπικά, το διάβασα απνευστί!

An interesting effort to draw the fictional story behind the wonderful real-life tapestry series, La Dame à la Licorne. These (probably) late 15th-century tapestries languished in a château in central France before being rediscovered by Prosper Mérimée, championed by George Sand and eventually purchased by the French government. They now hang in the former Musée de Cluny, where I have seen them on two occasions. They are entrancing.

This could have been a really fascinating story, but I found it rather lightweight. I normally enjoy Tracy Chevalier's books, but the large cast of protagonists made character development difficult and I didn't really connect with any of them. The tapestries and their production should have been centre stage, but they were overshadowed by the rather dull stories of the various characters.

However, this book has whetted my appetite to see these enchanting tapestries again - and to find out more about them.

When I began reading this book, I realized I had read it before, but since it was a good story I read it again. Tracy Chevalier has made a career of writing novels about art. She tells the story of the creation of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries through the voices of multiple characters and mixes in class, sex and pregnancies. Nicolas Des Innocents is a French painter who is commissioned to design the tapestries for Jean Le Viste, a French nobleman. Jean wants a painting of war and horses, but his wife intervenes and convinces Nicolas to paint the story of the Lady and the Unicorn. A womanizer, Nicolas seeks to bed every woman he can including Le Viste's daughter, Claude. The tapestries are created in Brussels by Georges De La Chapelle and his family. The novel tells the tale of two families: one a noble family in Paris and the other the family of a weaver in Brussels. Nicolas and the tapestries are the connection between the two families. The Lady and the Unicorn is a quick, easy and enjoyable read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in art, history and good story.