Rating: 
Summary: Doomed lovers oddly boring
Review: I just couldn't feel very sympathetic to the doomed lovers in this book. It was clear that they WERE doomed all the way through, but I didn't really care about them. I thought that Sophia was callow and superficial, leaving her adoring husband for a guy that didn't seem to have any attractive qualities. Cornelis's only sin seemed to be that he was older than her. I just wasn't very interested in these characters or their dilemma
Rating: 
Summary: Boring!
Review: I love historical fiction, but you have to be a fourth grade girl to appreciate this cliche, slow-paced story about a serving girl in love with a painter. The rich, vivid setting is not done justice in the least, as the story mostly takes place in one house, and the historical magnitude of the events of the Golden Age are barely mentioned. It's disappointing overall, and not worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Rich Feast of Words
Review: I loved this book to the hilt. After reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Tulip Fever was the icing on the cake of historical fiction and art as the theme. The Players: Cornelius: The wealthy old merchant in Amsterdam.
Sophia: His young wife wanting more than wealt and riches.
Jan: The young painter hired by Cornelius to paint the couple and immortalize them.
Maria: The maid of the family with secrets' of her own. The one who knows all and sees all.
Willem: Maria's Lover
Jacob: Jan's apprentice
Gerrit: Jan's manservant
Tulip: The center stage of the entire story. As sinful as ever. So these are the characters and the story takes place in 17th century Amsterdam, where tulips are a madness, where love is sometimes adulterous, where there is a yearning for a child, where there is betrayal, crimes of passion, blackmail, gamble, dreams, and no conscience. This book kept me awake as I flipped the pages that revealed the genius of Ms. Moggach. With every chapter and every character introduced, Ms Moggach provides the readers with a tapestry so magnificient and amazing - that sometimes the locale just fades into background. The tulips hog the limelight for most part of the tale with the players and the description is beautiful. Before you know it, you wish that this story would not end. A must read for all those who like literary page turners!
Rating:
Summary: Two tough cookies loved this book
Review: I purchased this book and made the mistake of lending it to one of the voracious readers in my Book Club -- The Mindreaders. We read "Girl With A Pearl Earring" and I thought this one was a good complement. Needless to say, the book has now been passed on to another Book Club member who changed her screen name to "Tulip Fever" in honor of the book because she loved it sooooo much. She paced her reading to just 4-5 pages a day because she didn't want to finish it. Since she hasn't given it back yet, I'm buying her her own copy for her birthday so that I can have my book back and share the wonderful reading experience it gave her and my other friend. Buy it and pass it on to someone you want to share it with.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I received this book this past weekend as a present, and what a great one it turned out to be! I finished the book within 2 days, which says a lot about how readable it is. Don't miss out on the story of a young girl unhappily married to an older man in Holland. The lives of the couple and their servant are disrupted when a painter is invited into their home to paint their portrait. There are some surprising plot twists that will keep you guessing. The book also has some great information on tulips, which just happen to be my favorite flowers. I can't recommend this book enough!
Rating: 
Summary: she's a master
Review: I think Deborah Moggach is a master of misdirection. It really fascinates me how she can lay something so obvious right in front of your nose but then prevent you from seeing it. I don't always engage with her characters deeply, but I always like the mind of the writer behind what I'm reading.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful story
Review: I was almost afraid to read this book after reading the reviews, although I'm glad I did. I found this book to be a very fast read, I really liked the short chapters with the different characters views. This book was aliitle too wordy or descriptive at times but I liked the comparisons too the tulips and paintings.
Rating:
Summary: written for the screen, not the book club
Review: I was hoping for a good, historical novel that would give me a sense of both Amsterdam and the tulip market in the 1600s. Instead, I got a made-for-the-screen romance, with Amsterdam and tulips merely props. The book did draw me in, but it was very light-weight. It took my book club about 5 minutes to discuss it, and all any of us could say was whether we liked it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Background, Trite Story
Review: In 1630s Amsterdam, fortunes were made and lost speculating on, of all things, tulip bulbs. In fact, comparisons are sometimes made between the Tulip Crash of 1637 and the stock market crash of 1929. Tulip Fever is an interesting book because of its unique and rather exotic setting, but, in the end, it is just another dull and trite story of seedy adultery. Twenty-four year old Sophia is married to the hard-working, proud and pious sixty-one year old Cornelis Sandvoort. Although she has never really loved him, she does remain grateful to him for rescuing both her and her mother and sisters from a life of devastation and poverty. She thus submits to her husband's nightly advances, not with passion, but with a certain resignation and an air of obligation to provide him with a child. Trouble arrives when Cornelis decides to have Sophia's portrait painted (in a gorgeous Delft blue silk gown) by the young Jan Van Loos, a handsome and dashing artist. While Sophia and Jan are attempting to sort out their difficulties with Cornelis, Sophia's maid, Maria, also runs into problems. The girlfriend of a fish seller, Willem, Maria now finds herself pregnant, and, of course, alone. Suffice it to say that a little blackmail ensues between the two women and Sophia ends up concocting a daring plan that involves an elaborate deception and wild tulip speculation. If it succeeds, great, but if it doesn't, only catastrophe will follow. The author does an excellent job of bringing seventeenth century Amsterdam and its citizens to life. Her details are rich, varied and vivid. History abounds in this novel but it never overwhelms it. In fact, I, myself, would have loved to have learned more about the tulip craze and what made people invest so heavily in something as mundane as an ordinary garden bulb. The short, succinct chapters are interspersed with reproductions of Northern European paintings and epigraphs from essays and literature of the period. While Tulip Fever is well-written, the problem I had with it is that once stripped of its very interesting setting, the story is just another ho-hum story of adultery and its myriad consequences. I am certainly not against adultery in any book, when adultery comprises an essential element of the plot, but an entire book about adultery can, and does, get more than a little tiresome. Personally, I blame The Bridges of Madison County for the influx of boring adultery books; Tulip Fever is a little better than Bridges, but not much, for in the end, Tulip Fever is simply the story of a vain and beautiful woman who cockolds a perfectly wonderful man whose only sin lies in loving her a bit too much. I'm not necessarily a fan of highly moral characters or happy endings, either, but Tulip Fever is a novel whose story has been told before, many times, in fact. The background, though, is so wonderful that I couldn't help but wonder what these same characters would be like if the author had only given them a fresh and original story to tell.
Rating:
Summary: I really liked it
Review: In this book I found myself walking the streets of a dutch city or looking at a Vermeer painting. I was totally taken by the overall atmosphere of the times : the tulipomania, the painters, the booming economy of Holland at the time. I personally didn't find the book to be predictable but well constructed, delicate in a way. Most is not said. It is up to the reader to sense: this was the magic of the book for me. I had a great time reading this book for its simplicity, engrossing storyline and hidden messages.
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