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Summary: Wonderful Time Trip
Review: Girl with a Pearl Earring is a beautiful tale of a long time ago. This story is realistic and heart driven. Griet, the 17 year old girl who becomes a maid to help support her family, is the focal point of the story and of a painting by her master which causes all kinds of trouble. She works in the house of a famous painter whom she is in love with. Life is not as easy as it would seem when one is a maid and in love with their master. This story is a fast read with details that create a world based in 1664. I would strongly recommend it!
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Summary: Masterpiece in a book
Review: This was an intriguing book that took the reader into the world of a 17th century maid and her artist master. The relationship between Griet, the maid, and the artist Vermeer left the reader in suspense of the characters true feelings. From an artistic point of view the author's description of Vermeer's art captivated the beauty and effort of the painting process. However, at times the book was slow. An example is the emphasis the author put on the gossip in the market. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in 17th Century art.
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Summary: SOME MAY LAUGH...
Review: ...but I don't think I've read such a good book (poetic prose) since "The Color Purple", and that was a LONG time ago!
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Summary: alyssa's review of girl with a pearl earring
Review: this is an exciting book that keeps the reader wondering if Catharina will ever discover Griet and the painter, Vermeer's secret. They share a bond and a single piece of jewelerly, a pearl earring. By the time Griet finds out how much she ment to Vermeer, she already has a family and Vermeer had passed away. This book will keep the reader occupied for hours
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Summary: Disappointment...
Review: I heard a lot about this book, and it was a bestseller, so the reading group I'm in decided to read Girl With a Pearl Earring. We were all pretty disappointed...The young girl Grit becomes a maid in the household of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. We hear about her life and passions, and her family, but she is a very unrealistic character, and you really feel that she is being written by a much older woman. The writer shows none of Grit's emotions, just tells you what they are, in a very unconvincing and detached way.
It seems unlikely, that a girl so young should be as confident, unimpressed by life and manipulating as Grit is! It hardly affects her leave her family, to fall in love or loose her virginity, nothing really surprises her, and she apparently can do everything better than everyone else: this uneducated young maid is even able to tell the master painter how to paint better! Appart from a cliched fascination with her MASTER Vermeer(that seems more like a badly formulated erotic fantasy of the author's than anything realistic) Grit shows no emotion, and the plot is unbalanced and boring. You never develop any sympathy for any of the characters, and the symbolism is MUCH to heavy. The book left me cold an bored. The only reason why it gets 2 stars, is the description and information about Vermeers paintings, which were interesting. Chevalier completely fails to make a credible portrait of a young girl (Grit is more like a 40 year old woman), and the historcal descriptions aren't very good either.
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Summary: The light always comes from the left
Review: Being an enormous fan of Vermeer for years, I HAD to read this book when it first came out. Now, waiting a while, I read it again, and it holdS up as well the second time as it did the first. Chevalier is a master talent and this is one of the best pieces of literature I've come across in a while. If you're looking for car chases (DA VINCI CODE) or a page turner (BARK OF THE DOGWOOD) this is not the book for you. Instead, it's a well thought out and expertly paced piece of writing.
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Summary: Dreaming of Holland
Review: I took this gem of a book with me on vacation and wanted
to read it on the plane. I could not put it down! I felt I was in Holland not in a stuffy, cramped airplane seat.If you like to be transported (like I do) to another time and place..pick up a copy and give yourself a treat.
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Summary: NEED for more emotion
Review: I liked it...but the ending was a huge disappointment. What was the steamy relationship between her and the painter Vermeer?? I was expecting MORE STEAM!
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Summary: A wonderful book
Review: Although I am only fourteen I loved this book for it captures
the true essence of the 1660S. It also gives a vivid
description of Griet's emotions toward the things that are
happening around her. As many people mention it also makes you wonder and leaves you wanting to know more and more about this intriguing story.
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Summary: Dazzling, beautiful, and complex.
Review: With nearly 700 reviews, there is no point in languishing in the plot, the beginning, the ending. No doubt this has been relayed over and over. But this book was so unique in itself that I couldn't bear not reviewing it! At the core of this book, despite the excess of somewhat "cookie cutter" semi-main characters (the painter's aggressive friend, the jealous wife, the lusting suitor, the vicious daughter) is simply the relationship between a painter and his muse. I'm only sixteen, and so haven't read as many novels as many of the reviewers, but I can say nonetheless that the relationship between Vermeer and Griet is the most dynamic one that I've ever experienced in a book's pages. Griet begins as a simple cleaner in Vermeer's studio, rearrangins and dusting his things after he's finished. Soon she advances to being his assistant, and lastly -- his muse, which ultimately destroys a part of her. The sexual tension in this book is, for lack of better wording, rather remarkable. The lurid, dull and replacable sex scenes with her suitor seem to be forced, unlikely, and above all else irritating. But as Chevalier writes of the way Vermeer looks at Griet while painting her, the heat of his body when they prepare the paints, and the way his fingers trace her face when he puts in the pearl earring - it is these subtle things that make you wonder: 'What if?' And when Vermeer sees Griet with her hair down, something she won't even let her own impatient suitor do, Chevalier writes with clarity: "You ruined me." It's these moments that make books worth reading. There is no pointless, unneeded sentiments until the ending, which despite its completeness I found to be rather empty. Griet is a likeable enough heroine in her aloofness, an intelligent young woman who knows how to get what she wants - even if she always doesn't /know/ what she wants. As her brother laughs and tells her that she cannot hide how much she yearns for her own master, the reader may get the impression that Griet knows more than she will even admit to herself. Among all the other admirable points of this book: the lyrical, beautiful writing, the poignant descriptions, and the lush characterization, it is ultimately the suffering that Griet undergoes for her master that touched me the most. And though Griet is warned that he does not care for her any more than his other muses, and to not get 'captured in his world', there are little hints of something more. The agonizing hopelessness of Griet's love is refreshing, and presented in a non-sentemental way that even I, usually a hardcore anti-romance fan, enjoyed. Ultimately, a book that makes you think. Perhaps not deep thoughts of the meaning of life, or the beginning of the universe, or the dawn of man, but thoughts about the complexities of love -- and how much love is worth.
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