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Summary: Who is that girl with the pearl earring?
Review: When I heard a brief description of this book I wasn't sure I'd enjoy it. All I knew was that it was a fictional account of one of Vermeer's model and the story of a girl in 17th century Holland. I felt the story might be kind of bland but as I learned, human drama reads well regardless of the location and time setting. I found this an enjoyable and quick read. The main character, Griet, is well-developed but the author still leaves room for the reader to wonder about some of her actions. I found myself thinking of Karen Cushman's "Midwife's Apprentice" another piece of historical fiction written with a younger audience in mind.
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Summary: Simple girl and a famous painter
Review: The Girl in Vermeer's painting truly comes to life in this book. She is not anyone famous; just a simple Dutch Protestant girl who finds herself in service as a maid in Vermeer's Catholic household. The girl, Griet, is only there out of financial necessity, and with inexperienced innocence and cautious skepticism she observes differences in Catholic customs and art. For her, all those paintings in the Catholic church are unnecessary...Protestants are content with how they imagine God to be. Gradually she becomes more comfortable, and comes to secretly love Vermeer, rejecting the butcher's son's proposals for marriage, though she allows his physical advances. She realizes she must be foolish rejecting the security the butcher can offer, but she can't resist being close to Vermeer and helping him in his studio. She is amazed when Vermeer decides to paint her, but he insists she pierce her ears and sneak his wife's pearl earrings for the painting. Questioning the morality of this, Griet does it for him, which eventually brings distress to the household, and changes in Griet's life. Generally I like real historical personages brought into historical fiction, but I felt a little embarrassed for Vermeer, for his suggested character flaws: dishonest with his wife; being too engrossed in his work to care much about his family; demanding that Griet succumb to his wishes. Who knows, maybe he was even worse than that, but it seemed a little unfair to portray him that way. Nevertheless, it is a well-told story, simple, yet rich in detail. In the taped version, Ruth Ann Phimister's voice and intonation is very believable, as if Griet herself is telling the story.
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Summary: a beautiful read
Review: I loved this story. It was captivating, interesting and highly informative. I learnt so much about Delft, the history and the lifestyle of those times. I was fascinated by the discussion around light, the paints, the models and the moods. Having viewed the Vermeer exhibition in London last year, I now wish that I'd read this book before then. It would have meant appreciating the paintings so much more.
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Summary: Fascination
Review: How imaginative of author Chevalier to compose such a well-rounded novel around the question of why the painter's "common" subject is wearing a valuable pearl earring. A memorable and thought-provoking story, I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: What's the big fuss?
Review: What's the big fuss about this book? I think it's selling because of the beautiful art on the cover. The story is just so predictable and so much like every other romantic story told. Perhaps people like the accurate historical detail? I'm sure the general public couldn't tell if it was accurate anyway.
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Summary: Good Historical Fiction
Review: This story is a pleasure to read, and while the true identity of the "girl with a pearl earring" is not known and is fictitious here, the other characters are real enough to make this a wonderful blend of history, research, and fiction.
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Summary: Girl With a Pearl Earring
Review: Girl With a Pearl Earring is a very good book. It show you how much one girl tries to help the family emotionally and financially.
Griet is a girl who is working as a maid for Johannes Vermeer. He is a painter and has 3 children, and he tries to paint pictures to help keep his family finacially made, but he has problems doing that because he spends such a long time on the paintings that he only gets two to three paintings a year. But once Griet comes along, he gets inspired by her. By using different colored paints and using a different point of view on painting. Johannes Vermeer does not think of Griet as a maid any longer, he uses her as a model and asks her for his opinion on things, but Griet is taking it the wrong way, she is falling in love with him, but she doesn't know what to do with it all. With Johannes bosy and annoying, pregnant wife to his underhanded mother-in-law, Griet is having a hard time full-filling her job helping her master when his wife is not allowed in his studio where he makes his master pieces.
This book is filled with so many delightful images and you almost feel like you are right there, in the 17th century, in the old Victorian house, and seeing Johannes paint one of his masterpieces. It almost makes you think of how things have changed, but how people did things and how things were. Towns people thought that maids were filthy, underhanded maids who would steal and take things behind there masters back, but Griet was a gentle and caring girl. She did everything that she could to help out her master and try to put in a good name for her family. She makes you want to go back in time and live there, and never come back to reality.
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Summary: Stunning!
Review: Of all the fiction that has come out recently featuring Vermeer or Vermeer paintings, this was my favorite. I don't know how she did it, but somehow the author's prose seems to be a reflection of the paintings themselves. The charged relationship between the fictional Vermeer and the servant girl (the narrator of the story) was very convincing. It also made clear that the options of women during this era, even those with interest and talent, were claustrophobically limited. Although I usually don't care for fictionalized versions of historical figures, this book rang very true.
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Summary: Another Time
Review: This was the most intriguing book I've read in some time. I couldn't put it down. It put me right into the life of the 15th century character. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Fresh plot and a little history around the working class as well as the wealthy class attitudes of a distant time.
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Summary: A great read
Review: As a lover of art and a current major in art history I picked up this book to read for a flight to California. Little did I know how enthralling and captivating Chevalier's story of Griet and her master Vermeer would be. I ended up starting and finishing the book just on the flight to LA, I had to find something else to read on the way home. Chevalier does a fantastic job in creating a fictional story behind Vermeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and the reader is left thinking about whether it could possibly be true or not. I certainly wished it were true because it is such a wonderful and intriguing story. A great read!
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