This book has been registered to raise awareness of LUCIA, a small charity which supports women and orphans in Ethiopia. BookCrossers around the world are taking part in a challenge in September 2009, where we will be releasing hundreds of books with a word relating to women's roles in the title. If you would like to donate to this worthwhile charity, please click here.


Synopsis:

The Dutch painter Vermeer has remained one of the great enigmas of 17th-century Dutch art. While little is known of his personal life, his extraordinary paintings of natural and domestic life, with their subtle play of light and colour, have come to define the Dutch Golden Age. The mysterious portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has fascinated art historians for centuries, and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centres on Vermeer's prosperous household in Delft in the 1660s. The appointment of the quiet, perceptive heroine of the novel, the servant Griet, gradually throws the household into turmoil as Vermeer and Griet become increasingly intimate, an increasingly tense situation that culminates in her working for Vermeer as his assistant, and ultimately sitting for him as a model. Chevalier deliberately cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style in homage to Vermeer, and the complex domestic tensions of the Vermeer household are vividly evoked, from the jealous, vain, young wife to the wise, taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic, but Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist in its tail. Chevalier acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study of the Dutch Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches, and the novel comes hard on the heels of Deborah Moggach's similar tale of domestic intrigue behind the easel of 17th-century Dutch painting, Tulip Fever.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

This book has been released to raise awareness of LUCIA, a small charity which supports women and orphans in Ethiopia. BookCrossers around the world are taking part in a challenge in September 2009, where we will be releasing hundreds of books with a word relating to women's roles in the title. If you would like to donate to this worthwhile charity, please click here.

Hi and if you are new to all this, welcome to Bookcrossing.
It would really be appreciated if you would make a comment about the book, where you found it and what you thought of it.
The book is now yours to read, keep, or pass it on. We'd like to know where it travels to, and if you don't want to join you can do this anonymously.
If you would like to know what happens to the book after you have passed it on please join. It doesn't cost anything, it's private and it's interesting to travel by proxy around the world.
If you do join, I hope you'll put my name down - molekilby - as your referring member.

Beautiful story, with much more in it than the film; contains an emotional love story with careful historical background about Delft and its people, together with interesting detail about the history of painting.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

West Yorkshire Playhouse should have people who are interested in art in all its forms -
but I've picked it up and passed it on to our friend Alison instead.

i caught this book in ossett at bianco hairworld and i now plan to set it free here in barnsley. This was an intriging tale which has made me want to find out more about vermeer an see more of his works. i am so glad that my friend tony passed it on to me and did not leave it at the playhouse as i have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I now want to set a book of my own free as i love this idea.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I am setting this book free and hope someone else will find it and enjoy it as much as i have, and look forward to hearing about it.