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Girl With a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier. Plume: 2001 (paperback). ISBN: 0452282152. 233 pages.
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Back before Rod Stewart became. . . um, what he is today, he wrote a great song
called "Every Picture Tells a Story (Don't It)." In her brilliant new novel, which has absolutely nothing else to do with
Rod Stewart, Tracy Chevalier imagines the story behind one of the world's most celebrated and mysterious pictures, Dutch
artist Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Chevalier reconstructs the world of seventeenth-century Delft, of a s
ociety rigidly ordered by class and religion, of two families connected by art, failure, and a sixteen-year-old girl named
Griet. Griet comes to work in the Vermeer household as a maid, but soon finds herself drawn to the hallowed sanctuary that
is Vermeer's studio, to the unexpected spectrum of light and color she discovers as his canvases take shape. But as Griet
and Vermeer begin to discover each other's unique artistic sensibilities, their families start to sense a smoldering energy
that could rupture both households beyond repair. We're sorry to fall back on book jacket cliché, but this one really is
that most elusive of literary prey--an intelligent page-turner.
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