AUTHOR: Tracy Chevalier
PUBLISHED: 1999
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Historical Fiction
PREMISE: A historical fiction imagining of who the girl in Girl With a Pearl Earring was and her life.
MY REVIEW: My interest in this book mostly comes from the fact that I adore art history. Also, this painting is beautiful and I find the whole practice of thinking about the lives of the models in art pieces interesting. But, just because it's interesting...doesn't always mean it'll make an interesting book. Unfortunately, that's the case here, because this book was frankly dull.
The historical detail is top-notch. The author also creates very vivid settings. The story is also quite believable for all that it's made up. But it's just very slow. Vermeer doesn't factor in very much and I personally didn't care for the relationship between him and Griet. It does give interesting insight to the artist but that's about it. Story-wise...this isn't particularly mind blowing.
It's a clever idea. I just don't think it's spectacular. Having seen the movie, this is one of the few cases where it makes a better movie then it does a book. At least with the movie you get pretty costumes and sets to distract you from the fact that the story is very very slow. It's a short book. It's actually less then two hundred and fifty pages. But those two hundred and fifty pages felt like they were crawling by and that's...not a good thing. I only recommend this if you are a big art history nerd. Because if you aren't, the chances are very good that you'll be bored.
WHO SHOULD READ: Historical Fiction fans, art history fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five yawns
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