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Summary: This novel is a masterpiece
Review: This is truly fantastic collection of stories. The fact that Susan Vreeland focuses not on technique or the actual process of painting allows the reader to focus on the emotions and actions of each of the painting's owners. The slightly disjointed nature of the stories and variations in writting style reflect the variations in characters themselves. The most wonderful thing about this entire book lies in the fact that all our questions are not answered and every thing does not tie up into a nice, neat little package. As a result, this novel a reflection of real life.
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Summary: A Lost Veremeer Portrait?
Review: In her book, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, the author Susan Vreeland presents her subject matter in a unique way. Focusing on an unknown Vermeer portrait, the author takes her readers from the present back to the time when the painting was actually done. But this premise isn't conveyed in the traditional manner of a flashback but rather as a series of inter-related stories as the painting goes backwards from the previous owner's hands to the next previous owner's hands.Who knows what treasures lurk in an ordinary home? When an art professor is invited to a to the home of a colleague, he is shown what the owner says is an original Vermeeer which nobody knows anything about. How did this professor get the portrait, wonders the art professor and why is there no provenance or mention of it anywhere in the art world? Could this in fact be the 36th portrait done by Vermeer which somehow became lost over the centuries? And now the author has set us on a course as wevhead backwards in time. And among the periods of time we travel to are the early days of the rise of Hitler, then to the court of a count, to flooded areas of Holland and finally to Delft where we first meet Vermeer in the home of the man who has bought most of his paintings so that Vermeer can feed his 11 children. And finally we are there as Vermeer begins to paint his daughter Magdalena. And it is up to Magadalena to tell the story of what happens to Vermeer, her family, herself and and what happens to this very portrait in the future. While I enjoyed this book, I did have some reservations. Close on the heels of reading Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier which also focuses on Vermeer, I felt that Girl in Hyacinth Blue lacked some of the wonderful descriptions of the artist and his craft. Whereas in Tracy Chaevaliers's book one could smell the paints and see Griet who served as Vermeer's model for the portrait with the pearl earrings and turban, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, seemed to gloss over these aspects concentrating on the characters in each story. And while the characters were well drawn, some of the stories failed to hold my interest as much as the others. But all in all, these were minor reservations and I would recommend this book to others who also enjoyed Girl With the Pearl Earring, the movie The Red Violin and even Jerry Seinfeld's espisode which also began with the end.
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Summary: Unusual and lovely
Review: Is it, or isn't it? That's the question the painting Girl in Hyacinth Blue: is it a Vermeer? The history of the painting is traced backward from present day to its creation in a series of vignettes, each of which could stand on its own as a short story. The painting has an impact upon each of the lives of the owners, and Ms. Vreeland spins each tale deftly. It's highly enjoyable and entertaining, a wonderful, fresh, and unusual read.
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Summary: My Personal Favourite
Review: This is the best book I have read in a long time. It is short and simply written, but the concept behind it is so wonderfully intriguing. The book moves backwards in time, telling the story of a Vermeer painting from the current owner, a college professor who obssesses about its beauty and provenance, through to the girl who was the subject of the painting. Every chapter deals with the picture not only in a different time, but also from a different perspective. The actual painting is described by the characters each time, through their own aspects and interpretations. A refreshing, compelling and rewarding read from cover to cover.
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Summary: As subtle and intricate as a Vermeer painting.
Review: Vivid, simple, and poetic, Girl in Hyacinth Blue reads like a collage of perfect little Vermeers as the author paints brief moments in the lives of several different owners of a haunting painting. Spanning the years from the present backward to the creation of the painting in the 1660's, the book is as intricately and subtly composed as one of Vermeer's paintings. Each episode illustrates two different kinds of love-both personal, private love and a larger universal love or sense of responsibility. At the same time, each episode also traces the ownership of the painting and gives glimpses of the role of art in the lives of ordinary people. Beginning with the dilemma faced by a teacher who acquired the painting from his father, a low level Nazi functionary during World War II, it then moves successively backward to the stories of the Jewish family which owned it, to a father who bought it to commemorate an early, lost love, and backward still to an the unhappy French wife of a functionary stationed in Holland and enjoying an erotic interlude. Ultimately, it regresses to the life of the Vermeer family and the daughter who sat for the painting. Girl in Hyacinth Blue is a literary gem of understated complexity.
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Summary: Not quite the "Girl With The Pearl"...
Review: With eight short stories or perhaps vignettes, Ms. Vreeman traces an unknown Vermeer from its inception, to a locked room of a Professor with a dark family past. Central to that past is the manner his Father acquired the painting and the same past that so haunts the son. This book cannot escape comparison with "Girl With A Pearl Earring", and while it does not compare poorly, it certainly finishes second. Some of the eight stories are good, and some are very good, but they remain just that, pieces of eight, not a unified tale. I would have liked to have read this as a single work, one that was not broken apart, shuffled, and left for the reader to thread a non-sequential storyline together. I enjoyed the book, and the read is certainly worthwhile. It does not make great demands upon the reader, but unfortunately it does linger either.
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Summary: Beauty Personified
Review: As much as I love the paintings of Vermeer I loved this book. A very interesting way to cite the provenance of the painting. Most of the stories were so touching and involving that they moved me tremendously. As a librarian and as a person who holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree, I found the synthesis of art and literature extremely moving. Vreeland writes with a passionate poetic touch and her sense of historical detail is extraordinary. I recommend it heartily.
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Summary: Well written, but lacking.....
Review: Maybe I'm suffering from selective perception, but is seems there has been an upsurge in books on Holland, Tulips, Dutch artists, and other Dutch lore. Having had four great-grandparents born in the Netherlands (Groningen and Sint Maartansdyke in Zeeland), who immigrated to the United States to settle in Holland Michigan in the 19th Century, I'm a big fan of all things Dutch. I'm also a big fan of Dutch art. I've visited many of the major musuems in the the U.S. and Europe, and seen much Dutch art. I've also had the wonderful experience of seeing a Vermeer retrospective and many of Vermeer's 35 paintings, some of them many times. I've also studied art history. So, I was primed to like this book. However, I didn't. It's not a bad book, it just doesn't live up to the hype on the jacket and in the reviews posted here and elsewhere. Maybe I should be glad it was so short and not terribly expensive, but Susan Vreeland writes well, and I wanted more--more plot OR more character developement OR more art history. I'm a very big fan of short stories. Either this book is a collection of short stories strung together with the artful device of a painting passed from owner to owner. Or, the book is a novel. If it is a collection of short stories, the plots are lacking. If it is a novel, character development is an issue. Maybe the book would have worked better if there had been fewer stories, or the plots were less predictable. Perhaps it would have been better if there had been more of an overlap in the various plots so that what is a subplot in one story becomes the main plot in another. Since the book is short, it can be read in one sitting but it may leave you wishing you had devoted your afternoon reading another book.
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Summary: An Illuminating Pallette of Stories
Review: An object does not choose to whom it belongs and yet it has a history however long, however short. For in its stillness, stories are stirring. If only a painting could talk, oh, the stories it could tell. So is the case with The Girl in Hyacinth Blue. With the unraveling of each story, Susan Vreeland unveils the depth of an imaginary Vermeer painting while offering me a sense of my own history. Of German-Dutch descent, I felt like I was reading a part of myself. Somewhere along the way I suddenly knew why blue was my favorite color, itself a symbol of calm. Just like the Red Violin, each story stands in its own strength. The sentiment, the sacrifice, the suffering, the savoring. I was at once entranced and then released to another equally moving story. Walking the streets of Amsterdam, sitting in the attic with the pigeons, wanting, as the girl in the painting, so desperately for life to account for something. The stories reveal what it is to love deeply and how to let go when it is time. An appreciation for art and its history has been forever transformed for this reader. As a teacher I would highly recommend this for English teachers of all levels who want to teach the craft of short story writing and to Humanities professors who wish to use literature to breathe life into the history of art and the art of history.
Rating: 
Summary: Very uneven
Review: This book has all the feeling of a book of essays cobbled together into a book so the essayist can get paid for the same work a second time. The thin thread of the painting fails to provide a way to sustain the reader's interest from episode to episode, and the device of working backward in time leaves the uncomfortable feeling of knowing in advance what will happen to this painting that some have loved and some just possessed. I would rate the book even lower but for the wonderful description of Vermeer's technique in the first chapter! The book's small redeeming grace is that it can be read so quickly that not a lot of time is wasted on it.
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