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Summary: Moving, poetic story of a painting's history
Review: An artist paints, a writer writes, and the work passes out of his/her control and becomes part of history. Vreeland gives us an almost mythical journey of one painting through time, and along the way she illuminates the human condition. A magical work!
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Summary: Quiet, moving, beautiful.
Review: What an amazing book; I cried more than once, reading it. The swirl of life--love, sadness, passion, cruelty--over the course of centuries, underlined by the utter stillness and enduring beauty of the painting.
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Summary: A Lovely & Thought Provoking Novel by a Talented New Author
Review: Susan Vreeland has written a lovely and thought provoking novel with well developed characters that will remain with you long after the final page. There is beauty and tradegy in each chapter, chapters that could stand alone as short stories but together add layers and depth to the history of an object, the painting, and the people and families who loved and cared for it.
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Summary: Disappointing
Review: Perhaps I wanted to find some of the delight I feel when I look at a Vermeer painting or reproduction of one. But instead I found a technically accomplished work which overall relentlessly focussed on the 'brutal facts of life', which has so little to do with the qualities of love, beauty, light and mysterious intimacy which I find in Vermeer's work. A depressing and disappointing read.
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Summary: Appallingly written rip-off
Review: In fairness, this is not really a rip-off of a better-known book about a Vermeer painting (Tracy Chevalier's lovely Girl with a Pearl Earring.) It's simply a dreadful book. Vreeland's prose is loose and sloppy, and some of the "facts" she presents in her stories are simply incorrect. However, what really makes this book a loser is that her stories are just dull, dull, dull. Every time I put this book down I had to *force* myself to pick it up again. Do yourself a favour and don't waste your time.
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Summary: Beautiful Book!
Review: I really loved this book. I do have to admit though, at the beginning I kept having to remind myself that the stories were going backward in time.
I really do not love short stories, but this really attracted me, each story related to the one painting, and each story so connected. This is my first book by this author, she writes with such beauty and insight....I look forward to reading her others.
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Summary: Nice concept , nicely written
Review: The concept behind this book is great: how many times have each of us seen a painting and wondered where it had been and what kind of lives and hands the art has passed through? Each chapter in this book would stand as a short story in itself. It is the object of the painting that connects these chapters together in a cohesive manner. The book is a nice journey through history.
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Summary: Remarkable!
Review: I loved this book. The style was unique, even though it was a little puzzling for the first 3 chapters. The book provides brief snipets in the lifes of several owners of the same portrait. Vermeer may be the artist, but the portrait is unsigned so it's authenticity is questionable. Chapter one takes place in modern times. Each successive chapter takes place further into the past. The last chapter is about a brief time in Vermeer's life. I felt somewhat disappointed at not being able to follow a direct line from the last owner back to Vermeer, but that disappointment added an facet of interest--it makes me long for more. I've only read 2 fiction books twice (Jane Eyre and Poisonwood Bible), but I started rereading this book the day after completing it. Here's hoping Vreeland continues to write.
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Summary: Follow that painting!
Review: Vreeland does a wonderful job with this book, which follows the life of a painting, from the present day back to its creation. The style of the story is reminiscent (albeit in reverse chronology) of the movie Tales of Manhattan (Ginger Rogers, Cesar Romero, you remember), which follows a tail coat through its remarkably adventurous life. What makes such a journey insteresting is the way the painting is bound inextricably to the scandals, loves, secrets, and desires of the characters who, at various times, own it. Reading the frankly personal chapters, I almost felt like a private eye, tracing the painting's history and linking the characters together.
While Vreeland doesn't claim to be an art expert, she does a wonderful job describing the nuances of the painting, and she clearly has admiration for the craft of the artist. I very much enjoyed this book, and it reads surprisingly quickly. You can easily finish it in one or two sittings. A real gem.
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Summary: Thirty-five or thirty-six?
Review: Johannes Vermeer, the great Dutch painter of long ago, didn't alway sign his work. As of date, there are alledgedly thirty-five definitive paintings. From time to time others have appeared only to be found to be fakes. Given this, the author has proposed that there are now thirty-six of these gems, and this is where the book takes off. The story is really a collection of short stories (the way McCrae uses the technique in his "Bark of the Dogwood") and each one concerns itself with the "immaginary" painting by Vermeer titled GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE. The author uses this painting to bind together the stories by telling us about the different people who have owened this alledged work. She begins in the 1990s and goes backwards in time. This fast-moving and ingenious work is bound to catch you off guard and of all the books I've read recently, this one was one of the more unusual. If you like the idea of this book, you might also enjoy two other books I've recently come across. The first is "The Jane Austen Book Club" and the second is "The Bark of the Dogwood." Both unique and entertaining.
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