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Summary: girl in hyacinth blue
Review: Susan Vreeland lovingly pieces together a quilt of provenance in this book; instead of cataloguing a dry list of names and dates of ownership for the imaginary Vermeer painting of a young girl sewing at its center, she provides the reader with interwoven stories beginning in the present and traveling back in time to 17th-century Delft that explore the circumstances of its inspiration, ownership, secrets and renunciation. In doing this, she succeeds in exploring the emotional, aesthetic and sensual ties that bind people to art and to each other across time and place. The strength of this book is its core of tenderness, which sometimes teeters on the verge of sentimentality, especially when Vermeer is the subject, but thematically anchors the disparate stories. Vreeland's language, however, does not often match Vermeer's delicate pictorial vocabulary; she is often awkward and overwrought and her sense of period detail is spotty. Read this book for its insight not into Vermeer's art and his milieu, but the human heart and its everlasting craving for beauty and connection and peace.
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Summary: A delight to read
Review: I was in a reading rut before I picked this book up. You know how it is, sometimes nothing on your usual book menu really works for you. I had turned to biographies and historical novels to break me of the rut. I picked this up last week on a whim, having passed it by many times before. I read it in exactly two sittings, and just highly recommended it to two of my closest bibliophile friends. This was just a delight to read!Vreeland has designed the book as a series of short-stories which all trace back the history of a 36th Vermeer painting. (It is held that Vermeer painted only 35, and this 36th is of Vreeland's creation). What I found most interesting about the individual stories is how well Vreeland depicted the difference in value, both emotional and monetary, the painting had for its different owners over the years. For some, the painting was priceless and something to be coveted or hidden or cherished for familial or emotional reasons. For others, including the painter and his family, the painting was worth food and survival. In addition, I came to "see" the painting more clearly with each passing chapter, as I came to know how the painting was seen by its owners and how their feelings towards it affected me. I have much to think about now that I can digest the painting's chain of ownership in total. I was entranced by the atmosphere of the Dutch regions in which Vreeland set the stories. This book has a definite feel to it, and it is mesmerizing; you will have trouble putting the book down. Not a bad way to break out of my rut!
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Summary: Good Vacation Book
Review: I wish I had read this before I read The Girl with the Pearl Earring. That book overrode any references this book makes with regard to Vermeer's genius. But that is not to say the books are similar. It's just that, particularly in the final chapters, Vermeer's genius is too shallowing presented. The Vermeer in this book is a fictional work, and the treatment, following its provenance back through time, is a worthy idea. How much do we wonder at the hands throughout time that have held a masterpiece? Consider how rapt we were at the history of The Red Violin. Each chapter explores the times and personal hardships of its historical owners, but each owner, I think, is dealt with in a summary way. Each life could have been dealt with more thoroughly. But I found that one could easily leave off reading this at the end of a chapter and that's why I called it a good vacation book. I also found that Vreeland used the painting as a sort of talisman, bringing good fortune to the good, and bad luck to others, with a couple of exceptions. All in all an interesting idea, well worked.
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Summary: An Amazing Read
Review: Girl in Hyacinth Blue, a book of historical fiction by Susan Vreeland, is an amazing read. Though there are eight separate stories in this book, they are all connected. It all takes place in the Netherlands, a believable setting since that is a real place. Also, each detail Vreeland includes about the villages and cities for settings make them seem very real.
The story begins with a teacher at a boarding school who has inherited a painting from his father, and he believes it to be a Vermeer painting. The first chapter tells how this painting affects the man and what he feels about it. Nearing the end of the chapter, it is unsure what will happen to the painting, if it will be kept or destroyed. After being introduced to the painting, the following seven chapters tell a story of many other people connected to it. They have all been affected deeply by it in some way or another.
Susan Vreeland is very descriptive in her writing. As I read, I can just paint a picture in my mind of each thing as she describes it. I also liked the way she divided the book into eight stories that are all connected, because you get to see how an object that passes through numerous generations can really affect people more than it seems to. It's also fun to explore all different times in history, as this book begins in the present and goes back to the late 1600's.
Susan Vreeland especially develops the painting, the Girl in Hyacinth Blue, as the main character. As I read through the story, I could eventually just imagine every detail of the painting and was amazed at how an object could be such an inspiring character. The painting affects every supporting character in some way, and really makes this an enjoyable book. Also, the other characters use plenty of dialogue, making it easy to imagine each person as they came along and know how they talked and felt about things.
I would recommend this book for teens or above. This would be an especially good book for people who enjoy art. However, the topics discussed in the book are ones all kinds of people could relate to. The book covers many of the things that people go through in their life, which includes love, natural disasters, and death. Overall, I think lots of people would find this book exciting and interesting to read since it is very different from any book I have ever read. It has eight very different and amazing stories that make this book a fast but very awesome read.
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Summary: A Fascinating Journey Through Time
Review: When a shy, private-school math teacher, Cornelius Engelbrecht, discovers a canvas thought to be a Vermeer, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, a touching and beautifully-written book, begins a fascinating journey back through time to trace the history of the painting. Engelbrecht's father's dying words had been, "An eye like a blue pearl," referring to the female figure in the painting, that of a young woman in a blue smock and rust-colored skirt, standing beside an open window. Although Cornelius feels captivated by the painting, he also feels a sense of shame at how it came to be in his father's possession. From the revelation of what, exactly, the elder Engelbrecht did, we then move backward through time from the point of view of one owner to another, all the way back to the painting's point of origin. Each time the painting changes hands, there are high hopes, a time of optimism, until it finally falls into Cornelius' hands and he realizes how it has been tainted by history. The single thread running through each story, the one that connects each character, is this lovely painting, the painting of the Girl in Hyacinth Blue. One of the most fascinating things about this lovely little book are the details of family life and the history that can be found in each vignette. Like the painting, each "story-within-the-novel" seems to be a frozen moment in time and Vreeland's language in painting her own word portrait is both formal and concise as she offers lush detail and wonderful insight. Much in the book is tender and sad and it truly touches the heart. We feel the pain of these characters and identify with their suffering. They are real people and we can almost believe the painting is real as well. The central section of the book, and the one that is most fascinating, is called "Morningshine," and focuses on a Dutch family who are isolated in their farmhouse and surrounded by floodwaters. The following passage is indicative of Vreeland's beautiful, but rather spare, prose: "Saskia opened the back shutters and looked out the upstairs south window early the second morning after the flood. Their farmhouse was an island apart from the world. Vapors of varying gray made the neighboring four farmhouses indistinct, yet there was a shine on the water like the polished pewter of her mother's kitchen back home. Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so, she thought. But it wasn't so. And the cow would have to stay upstairs with them until it was so, however long that was, stay upstairs messing the floor and taking up half the room." The above-passage clearly shows Vreeland's talent for evoking a sense of time and place. This is in evidence throughout the book and makes it highly atmospheric and charged with the energy of the times. Moments of serendipity are scattered through Girl in Hyacinth Blue as are the harsh realities of the times: hunger, poverty, misery. At one point, in Saskia's story, she is scolded by her husband for feeding their hungry children the seed potatoes he intended to plant in the spring. This is a fascinating and extremely well-written book, a little masterpiece, just like the Vermeer it creates. It is a book that will appeal to readers of popular literature and those with more literary tastes as well as to art lovers everywhere. Beauty, says Vreeland, is necessary to life. Judging from the beauty of this book, beauty might be just as necessary to life as are next season's seed potatoes.
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Summary: In a word: dull.
Review: This book is utterly DULL, and I don't often say that about many novels. I usually trudge through to the end of most books I start, as I consider myself a tenacious reader and think it a bit unfair to give up on a book before reading it in its entirity. I could not, however, finish this flat, characterless, plotless series of disjointed stories. YAWN!
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Summary: So boring barely read it...
Review: I had such a banal time reading this tedious book I stopped reading within a few chapters. Uninteresting, undetailed, not at all intricate... if other children besides me have read Girl with a Pearl Earring, I could certainly make no comparison. This book completely drew my attention elsewhere... to the table, to the chairs and other things around me.
I found myself being lured by that beautiful cover. But the book is so terrible...
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Summary: A Real Worth While Read!!!
Review: This is the first time I've ever read anything by Ms. Vreeland and I found her topic and storytelling to be very entertaining and very descriptive. This story tracks the path of a painting thought to have been created by Vermeer and we follow it from present day to back to the day it was created. This is really a story that is made up of several short stories each standing on it's own and the different effects this one painting had on each owner. I found this to be a very entertaing read and look forward to reading my by this very talented author!
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Summary: Good painting, bad story
Review: This cover represents the beautiful painting of a young girl... but do not be fooled. With boring characters and a "safe" storyplot, this story is a child's version of Girl with a Pearl Earring, but it doesn't really work... after a few pages, I find myself sarcastically enticed about this book. Yawn!
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Summary: Unusual and enlightening
Review: Like "The Lady and the Unicorn," or "The Bark of the Dogwood," this book is a wonderful and balanced cross between literature and a page turner. Great story, great characters, and great author make this one of the most enjoyable reading experiences you'll ever have. Also recommended: "The Bark of the Dogwood" and "The Lady and the Unicorn."
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