Girl with a Pearl Earring

Rating:
Summary: A glimpse of a possible life
Review: This was a facinating weave of a story around a famous painting, a look in a possible life of a 17th century maid in a Delft household of the famous painter; Vermeer.

What I particularly liked was wandering around in the mind of a young woman, raised in the 17th century with her reflections and observations. She dwelt not only on what she saw, but the significance of those events and views to her. Especially poignant was her observations on her family home and neighborhood after she had dwelt for sometime in that of Vermeer household.

What was surprising was the significance and interpretations of some events based on 17th century thinking.

The story centers around the young woman; Griet who is portrayed as being the woman in Vermeer's famous painting; "Girl with a Pearl earring". This story shows her family background and the story behind why she has come to be a maid. You see the story unfold as this Protestant girl ventures in to Papist corner to join her employer's household. Her interactions with her Master, his wife and Mother as well as his children and other maid, come to show each's personality so clearly.

What is most hard to wrap your mind around is how few "rights" a poor person has compared to the wealthy in that day and age. Griet's sense of position, though she was not subservient, was that blame traveled down the hill of status and had more to do with who you were than what you did. Her perspective was not one of outrage as mine would be, but of acceptance and awareness of this disparity. She often had to tread softly and react to events that she was to be blamed with, warily. Innocence was not enough.

The story unfolds how she came to be in one of her Master's paintings and what is interesting is the reaction and concern for this by all the parties in the book. You see the reaction in the 17th century of a woman displaying her hair, to the significance of earrings and facial expressions. What was also interesting was her reaction and interest in Vermeer's paintings and the process of them. I never realized any of this was part of the process. I can only assume the writer did some research on how paintings were done in those times.

It makes for a facinating read. It gives you an opportunity to step back in time. It also makes you thankful to live in the 2000s.

Rating:
Summary: The Makings of a Masterpiece
Review: Inspired by the mystery in a Vermeer picture on her wall, author Tracy Chevalier created a story of a young girl to explain the enigma behind the figure in the painting. Who was the girl? What did she have to do with the painter Vermeer? These questions are answered in the skillfully written historical fiction novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring. Griet, a young Protestant girl on the verge of becoming a woman, goes to work for the Catholic Vermeer family during the 1600's. The malevolent battle between these two opposing Christian denominations is displayed through the tension felt between Griet and the Vermeer family. During her stay with the Vermeers, Griet matures through her work and life in the household. By assisting Vermeer with his artwork, she gains artistic vision and learns how to better appreciate art and the world around her. Griet not only grows by becoming more perceptive and tolerant of things unfamiliar to her, but she also gains awareness of the role women play in society. She attains this newfound understanding through the complex relationships with her overbearing suitor and her reserved yet demanding master. At the crossroads between adolescence and womanhood, she must consider the developments of these relationships in order to decide the course that the remainder of her life will take. This touching novel maintains the reader's attention through vivid descriptions of characters and emotional complications. An education in the historic background of Vermeer's time and paintings can be acquired through reading Chevalier's book.

Rating:
Summary: Like a small painting
Review: Only 232 pages, I looked this book over carefully before beginning. I was trying to go to a place in my mind, the kind of place where I am drawn to, say, a small but powerful painting in a museum. So I did go there and experience a moment in time with the author as she passed through the home and family of the painter Vermeer in the Netherlands, circa 1660's. My guide was a young maid, Griet, who worked hard and caught the eye of the great painter. She fell in love in a simple romantic way, as she yearned to mix the palette colors of the Master, Vermeer, to be close to his aura of genius, and to him. She began to notice the simplest detail as he painted, viewing his compositions in her own eye. The story takes this young maid to the brink of fate, when she becomes one of his paintings. He adds one final touch, his wife's pearl earring, a touch that will perfect this work. But it is the end, for once the wife sees the painting she will know about her husband and the young maid. It matters not that the "affair" was never consummated. Such things weren't done in a society so rigidly structured. Griet realizes that she must leave this unhappy home before she disappears into the vision of the painter and his lust for images.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic concept, Great book
Review: The concept behind this is so great - what DID prompt Vermeer to paint this young girl with the beautiful earring? Chevalier tells a fantastic story that is engaging, fun, and exciting to read, and a tale that is fun to fantasize about. I kept finding myself flipping back to the cover to look at the painting, and can imagine how the model felt with each brushstroke.

Rating:
Summary: Art Comes to Life
Review: Begin with the haunting painting by Vermeer, add to that an imagined tale of how the painting came to be and you have Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. The story begins with a basic plot line of poor girl who must stoop to a lower station in life, but with rich detail of the times to flesh out the story, the tale unwinds in a fascinating way. As the reader slips through the first-person narrative, the home where the poor girl lives comes alive with characters who if not unique, are distinctly drawn and easily imagined in the reader's imagination. Although the story bogs down into all too expected developments in the middle of the book, hang on. The end of the story is worth the reader's while to learn how and why the painting might have come to pass. And the multi-faceted meaning of a pearl earring.

Rating:
Summary: An Intimate Insight
Review: T. Chevalier's book Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the most beautifully written books on what a deep and intimate experiance it is for a person to be a witness and participant in the creation of great art. As readers we are drawn into the world of the painters household through the eyes of a young maid who is witness of and protogonist in the creation of one of the most beautiful paintings ever painted. We have the benefit of bonding with the painter and his world from a very intimate point of view witnessing the very process of creation.

Rating:
Summary: Author With A Pearlescent Skill
Review: Any Vermeer picture is worth more than my thousand words below. Still, may I encourage debate?

Worthwhile tale. Yet as entranced as I am with book-concept, textured feedback, elements intrude.

It's cultic, the insistence by enthralled critics, that Ms. Chevalier has gifted us, with the definitive explanation of the girl whose portrait Vermeer painted. She can't have.

Beautifully styled creative fiction. Yet my allegiance is, beyond Vermeer -- to Vermeer's truth. Notice the eyes of "Girl ..." Vermeer is a master of irony. Light, by nature, exposes. Via his instincts and talent, Vermeer utilizes light, contrarily, to emphasize mystery, which he seems intent on sustaining.

Why confine ourselves to one name, one version, however fine? So many potential storylines about this maiden, so many awesome possibilities about her role, desires, sorrows, feelings about being immortalized, beckon quietly, awaiting discovery, discussion.

Ms. Chevalier uplifts me with calm storyline, style. The basic idea intrigues: a servant/apprentice, awakening artistically and sensually. As a woman I often identify heartily with "Griet," the protagonist. I love also how passage after passage unfurls, lotuslike, as if each were a subtle art lesson, a petal of art-technique to marvel, savor. Admirable.

A bonus. It's wonderfully amusing, the author's unintentionally humorous effect, in unveiling the maid's Forrest Gumplike derivative celebrity: "Griet" goes finding or insinuating herself into a series of some of the most memorable sittings per art-history.

In the above paragraph, a clue. Something important, nonnegotiable, about Vermeer, to me at least, is obscured in text characterization.

Vermeer-art illumines, a source of spiritual rejuvenation for me. I felt the author was showcasing "Girl ..." via a filtered quavering light. I do see what Ms. Chevalier sees: the intelligence, self-awareness, courage in self-exposure while retaining boundaries of interiority.

My subjective impressions: Vermeer hinted at more. He, light-sensitive, was responding to and playing up her iridescent spirit. In his portrait, she seems vivacious, with a maverick worldview, an essence of merriment not fully suppressed by society's rules, nor by whatever personal sadness is bleeding softly through her eyes. The book characters have little sense of fun: "Griet" is subdued, "Vermeer" rarely laughs.

"Vermeer" emerges cold, dimsightedly distanced from a victimized maid's struggles to pierce her ears, fulfill other duties, handle her heartache over him. The author seems to speak through the character, van Leeuwenhoek, claiming Vermeer conjures a world "as he wants it to be," warning of his "trapping women." Doesn't ring true. If Vermeer's sweat altered setting, rearranged detail, magnified color, controlled process, it strikes me he labored so because, to him, outer reality deceives. Vermeer seemed blessed with access to truly "what is:" Integrity, pristine connectedness, blazing at the heart of things.

Ms. Chevalier's "Griet" emits slyness, an ease in lying. Her trademark sideward glance (which per the painting awes me as a mark of magnificent mystery, self-composure) here in the novel reflects a manipulative nature. I look to the canvas -- the intense shimmering gaze -- she is indeed multi-faceted as a crystal, but, unlike her fictional counterpart, complex without cunning, false humility.

Mainly, it's puzzling Vermeer, the Knower of Light, is dimmed to a stern, shadowy household figure, a heaviness in his manner and intent.

This man was drawn to light, worked with light, lived on light, in a real sense ever embodies, radiates light, via his craft. He emanates pragmatic enlightenment, a revitalizing transmission to me of palpable energy.

So Ms. Chevalier's mundane treatment limits "my" Vermeer. Even were it her aim, chiaroscurist-style, to show interesting paradoxical, somber strains, in Vermeer's nature, evoking his allure, secrecy, anguish -- Light, lightheartedness, needed to be, I sensed, his overwhelmingly dominant trait.

To "Griet" he's "weary." Yet something luminous within Vermeer had buoyed him, inflamed his passion for pigment, helped him cope, last longer than others might.

The author's "Vermeer" seems a great, not consecrated, artist, who mastered, only, the art of highlighting prosaic life.

For me, Vermeer did something grander, nobler: he caught people in the act of perfection.

Minimizing "Vermeer," Ms. Chevalier overcompensates with "Griet." She makes "Griet" too perfectly perfect, cemented in perfection, in skills, oneupmanship abilities. This ignores the historical Vermeer's seeming instinct, message, that perfection could only be, fleetingly, experienced by the subjects and glimpsed by him. To our benefit, he seizes what is transitorily perceived (if at all, by bystanders). With that trickster-gift of his, Vermeer transforms gestures into shining forms of contemplation for the ages.

I'd encourage the author to explore these subtleties to Vermeer's genius. Few "ordinary" people in "real" life could recreate what appears within Vermeer's canvas-world. Yet the author has "Griet" so easily mimic in the studio, postures based on reader-recognizable Vermeer works. Any one of the artist's pictorialized, so-called everyday actions would be impossible, to duplicate, for most humans (let alone the repertoire of artifical poses "Griet" expertly performs).

On one's own, a subject would have to produce flawless mathematical precision: The simple, straight flow of the milk-line poured from the jug, in Vermeer's "The Milkmaid." Or, the novel's inspiration, "Girl ..." Her head, her eyes, are tilted at an arduous angle, without visible tremor. Solely impeccable yogic stillness and luminosity. A state untainted, unreachable, via the relentless eyestrain "Griet" battles in her sessions.

The main book characters don't exhibit the one necessary Big Instant of acute intensity of being, of focus, enkindled by Vermeer. His actual subjects, seemingly approachable, familiar, become truly the equivalent of Zen Masters, Hindu "Perfected Beings," or the Saints of serenity from other paths -- without the excess, any claims to permanent incorruptibility. For one rare achingly poignant moment, there is spontaneous, perfect pouring, perfect resting, perfect gazing, etc. Most of his subjects resonate from a center point of poise, that somehow Vermeer coaxed forth, sparked momentarily, via innumerable sittings, and honored.

Still, Ms. Chevalier affects me by her artistry, which I deeply appreciate. -- Reviewer: Cory Giacobbe.

Rating:
Summary: Self contained and solitary as an oyster....
Review: Griet, the protagonist of Tracy Chevalier's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" is very much like the girl in Vermeer's painting of the same name--keeping her own counsel, beautiful, and a bit enigmatic. The reader eventually comes to know some things about Griet--the color of her hair for example. We know only a bit more about her thoughts, motivations, and actions. Why is she so bold at times? Imagine a mere serving girl rearranging Vermeer's artifacts set out for a painting--especially after being warned not to do so by the Mistress of the household! And, she never really confesses directly how she feels about Vermeer. I can only think of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" -- does she desire the man or the artist? And, speaking of enigmas, I still don't know much about Vermeer.

The girl in Vermeer's painting is unlike anything else he ever created. For one thing, while many of the sitters for his paintings can be identified, and the yellow satin cape with the ermine trim shows up over and over, the girl in this painting remains a mystery. According to "Johannes Vermeer" printed by the National Gallery in Washington, "The Girl.." has proven difficult to identify because there is no parallel for her clothing with contemporary Dutch fashions. Also, the concept of the painting is very different from the other interior genre scenes Vermeer painted. "The Girl.." exists against a backdrop of black. And, the skin tones of "The Girl.. are created by "layering a thin flesh-colored glaze over a transparent undermodeling" something apparently Vermeer had not done in any of his other paintings and did not do as well in later paintings. He seems to have been truly inspired by this girl. Who was she?

Chevalier attempts to draw her own portrait of the girl. Her story is compelling, evolving not unlike Vermeer's painting, where overlay after overlay of color is used to build the subject's image. The plot is not complex. The book could have been titled "two years in the life of Vermeer's sitter of the girl with the pearl earring." Speaking of which, the book can be easily read in two sittings.

Two recently released books involving a Dutch painting: "The Girl in Hyacinth Blue" by Susan Vreeland and Michael Frayn's book "Headlong" have been compared with "The Girl With a Pearl Earring." For me, "The Girl.." by Chevalier is better than "Blue.." by Vreeland, but Michael Frayn's book is the best. Different strokes...

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure to read!
Review: Due to family misfortunes, 16 year old Griet becomes a maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer. Through her eyes we see all the different people in this family with their different agendas.

Through time Griet becomes, not just a maid, but Vermeer's assistant, mixing colours for his paintings, and eventually his model.

I disagree that the ending was sad, yes it was easily predictable, as it was shown throughout the book. Simply Griet needed an exit, and there was only one logical answer.

I loved the descriptions of the paintings, and found myself turning back to the front cover of the book and studying it, time and time again.

Rating:
Summary: Finely drawn character
Review: An imaginative story with an astute, finely drawn heroine who wrests a life and love of her own from a society that would deprive her of control. A delight.