Rating: 
Summary: changing countries
Review: i thought this book was very accurate in how it showed an american being mostly alone in a different country, because i have felt the same way ella did in this book. i'm glad i read it because i thought i might be the only one, and also found the source of my growing pessimism. Even if you hate someplace and you're miserable in it, it becomes part of you and changes you. some people may think ella leaving her husband was cruel, and i guess it kind of was cuz he was so clueless, but you can't really go back to the way you were before if it doesn't feel right anymore, but you can't really stay the way you are if you're not very happy, you just have to find whats important to you...basically it [is tough].
i thought this book was pretty good and i learned about a different period in time that i did not know much about. Its entertaining, although when u finish you're like "huh what?" and u need to go back just to be sure, cuz some parts are a bit fuzzy.
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Summary: This book is great!!!
Review: I loved this book!! I couldnt read fast enough. It kept my attention until the last page.
Rating: 
Summary: Chevalier's success
Review: Ms Chevalier wrote a brilliant first novel: girl with pearl earings, and a second followed - Falling angels- which touched a different subject but was also a fantastic novel.However no author should rush to a third one as she did. I have the impression the commercial success pushed her to write a third one too quickly. The Virgin Blue has a good idea, a lot of research was done, but it goes so fast that the whole story quickly becomes fake, full of stupid coincidences that fall from the blue and make no sense at all. The end is sudden, uncomprehensible, "invraisemblable". A ridiculous finale! I am still rather angry with the end because it left lots of details unexplained, which is not Chevalier's style.
Ms Chevalier, take an advice: slow down... and tell your publisher you have a name to preserve and that you will not be pushed to write "just another novel".
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Summary: Not about the airline
Review: I bought this book under the mistaken impression that it was a historical analysis of Richard Branson's Australian airline 'Virgin Blue'. Once I got over the shock of my silly mistake I kept reading anyway. Ms Chevalier is the graduate of a creative writing course and what's even more alarming is that she seems to be proud of it. Proud enough to mention it on the 'about the author' page anyway. Personally I would keep such a thing a deep, dark secret but each to his (or in this case her) own I suppose. The story is about a shallow American woman who moves to France with her pony-tailed husband, gets pregnant, and then leaves him for no very good reason. I assume she couldn't stand the pony tail any more. I know I wouldn't be able to. The story ENDS when she shacks up with a French fancyman, pregnant to her husband. I mean, like, hello! (I apologise for that lapse into American vernacular). Isn't that the beginning of a story? American woman decides to stay in France with French loverboy while pregnant with American child? Can't you just see the plot developing from there? The grief of the natural father of the child? Custody battles across the Atlantic? The lack of affection of the Frenchman for his girlfriend's ex-husband's child? All sorts of intrigue springs to mind but unfortunately Chevalier gives us none of it. Oh, I almost forgot. Sprinkled through the modern American story is a rather tiresome and unconvincing tale of a French protestant family living in the same region 500 years previously. Chevalier makes use of the entirely unoriginal and unbelievable vehicle of a mystical psychic connection between the vacuous modern American 'heroine' and her distant forebears. Yawn. In summary - this book is what you would expect from a graduate of a creative writing course. It should carry a warning for aviation buffs that it has no connection with the Australian airline of the same name.
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: I honestly think this book was a strong competitor of Girl with the Pearl earing. I loved the way these two stories were interwoven, she did an excellent job. I couldn't put the book down, decide which story was better...Chevalier is truly a great author. She had me fascenated until the very last page. I really recomend this book, it has a little of everything- romance, mystery, suspense and scenery.
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Summary: changed lives, four centuries apart
Review: Tracy Chevalier's first novel isn't as good as "The Girl With The Pearl Earring." But I enjoyed it and reccommend it. It begins with a small girl named Isabelle, whose hair changed color "in the time it takes for a bird to call to its mate." The Duc brough paint from Paris and painted the niche behind the statue of the Virgin Mary a brilliant blue. The sun caught Isabelle's brown hair, and turned it copper, and that color it remained the rest of her life. This blue gives the book its title. Isabelle's change in hair color gives her the nickname "La Rousse" after the Virgin Mary, who in France was then shown with red hair. Isabelle was a devout Catholic, even after the Calvinist preacher converted the familiy she later married into and she was forced to outwardly conform. It was a mystical age--remember when Ettiene told her the marks on the page of the Bible invisibly flew into the preacher's mouth? Remember not to put 21st C. ideas of independent women onto 17th C. women. She would have inherited the farm, but she could not have farmed it by herself. As her father had said, hiring hands to help was impossible. She was already seen as an outcast in the community because of the fact that her hair had turned red. She had not really consented to sex with Ettiene. Who would marry an outcast woman who was rumored to be a witch and was pregnant or had a child? What choice did she really have, even though she already knew he was not a good choice and his family feared her? I liked Ella. Culture shock is a real thing. Rick was a cardboard character, but I think that was part of the point. She hadn't really known him in the US. You put a relationship in a new setting, and it looks different. His lack of listening to what she was really trying to say to him fit my experience of some men, including the one I was married to. He listened on the surface, wanting to fix, not wanting to find out about her feelings. She really did try--an American try--to fit in, and was devastated when Jean-Paul told her what the town thought of her efforts. I've read about the religious wars of the 16th C. but from the historian's point of view. Seeing how it might have affected a family was fascinating. And I understand Ella's sudden interest in genealogy. Remember that her father had told her she had roots there, and given her the information on her cousin in Switzerland. I'm into genealogy too, and once hooked, it's got you. Somebody with European roots who has a chance to be there, look at records, find a family Bible, look at places people might have lived, feel the vibes as Ella did--boy did that ring true for me. Jean-Paul was at first an irritating character. But he seemed quite real to me, and as Ella said, she liked his teasing. It was better than Rick's, "You want to have a baby? Well, then, let's have a baby." Their relationship developed, which hers with Rick didn't seem to. I hoped at the end that she ended up being good for him and they got married. There were too many coincidences, yes. It was hard to sort out the characters when the plot flipped back and forth from one time period to the other. But I did enjoy this book. It's good to know that Chevalier developed her writing from this book to "Girl With a Pearl Earring." Wonder what she'll come up with next!
Rating: 
Summary: entertaining but a bit amateurish
Review: I'd have to say that I agree with the general gist of the reviews. I found this book to be far less graceful than The Girl with the Pearl Earring, although it kept me interested nonetheless. The symbols that run through the book as well as the connections that Chevalier makes between Ella and Isabelle are a bit contrived and overdone. In addition, Ella's psychology and motivations are somehow not believable. They don't ring true. Nonetheless, one must remember that this is actually her first novel. And it is an engaging story that is certainly worth reading.
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Summary: Disturbing Ending
Review: I finished reading this book over a week ago, and the novel still haunts me. As several other reveiws have mentioned, the characters could be better developed, but the overall result is entrancing. Isabelle is the most interesting character; I had to force myself not to jump ahead (the chapters alternate the stories of the two women)and see what happened to her next. The story simply pulls the reader along to an ending that I found disturbing - although it was pretty obvious what was coming, I kept wishing somehow it would end another way. The questions the ending raised were huge - I would have liked more insight into the characters of Isabelle's in-laws - mainly her husband Etienne, whose cruelty appeared to stem from the influence of his "evil" mother (what else do you call a woman who hates her grandchild to the extent she did)? But Chevalier never really explains why her in-laws did what they did or what made them capable of such an atrocity. Thus, I found that the ending left me with a lot of unanswered questions which I have been turning around in my mind for days...I suppose that was probably Chevalier's intention.
Rating:
Summary: Good to the last page
Review: I found this book to be maybe the best of Tracy thus far. To be honest, the first chapter threw me. It was a deep read at first, but once I read the historical notes and got deeper into the book, I was hooked. The ending was amazing and the similarities of the two main characters grew stronger and stronger as the book went on. The last chapter was amazing!!!! I definitley recommend this book and don't let the french intimidate you. It is a beautiful book with amazing description and intense historial references.
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Summary: Confusing and depressing....
Review: I was very disappointed with "The Virgin Blue" since I expected a book like "Girl With A Pearl Earring"- which I read before this one. Chevalier is tying in two stories from different time eras:
Isabelle du Moulin in the 1500s and Ella Turner (Tournier) in the present time. However,the split-narrative seemed to be split stories as well. I really did not see any kind of real pattern as the stories of Isabelle du Moulin and Ella Tournier are messily intertwined.
First is Isabelle, and at the beginning of the novel she is a midwife. Her red hair makes her an outcast due to its' similarity to that of the Virgin. It seems that for no reason she decides to marry Etienne Tournier, a man who tortures her about her red hair and believes she is a witch. She lives with him and they have a family in an anti-Catholic Calvinist society. She ended up getting pregnant when she slept with a shepherd (which was not quite clear), and also faced the death of her daughter, Marie, who also had red hair, and was last seen in a blue dress.
Ella Turner was a midwife in California. She moves to Toulouse in France with her husband, Rick. She too ends her career being a midwife when she moves to France. Seemingly out of nowhere she wants to search for her family ancestors. She - unlike Isabelle - pretty much deliberately makes herself out to be an outcast, and she barely gives France a chance. Then, she cheats on a husband who she is merely bored with, gets weirded out when her hair turns reddish from the sun, and she is disturbed by dreams of a blue dress on the nights that she and Rick have sex. (Is this a connection to the Virgin? Is sex bad? Is Rick so bad?)
I feel as though this story was a great idea gone wrong. I mean, there is hardly a connection felt with the characters. People are described in detail, and events are discussed (I feel) just to bring up historical topics.
The stories of Isabelle and Ella were hardly parallel. I do not feel as though they are really alike, and I found little meaning in the symbols of the blue dress, the red hair (La Rousse) and the connection in the time periods.
I kept waiting for something good to happen in the book, but it is kind of like the title. Blue. The only connection I saw in the stories is that they - Isabelle and Ella - were poor decision makers.
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