A jewel of a novel about art, beauty and desire.
Susan Vreeland 's bestselling collection of linked stories, GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, was sold in thirteen countries and shortlisted for a number of major prizes. THE PASSION OF ARTEMISIA is her first novel.
UK REVIEWS:'This is not just another book with a Vermeer on the dust jacket...It is an illuminating meditation on the nature of art....This beautifully imagined and written book...is a work of art itself' Sunday Telegraph'Susan Vreeland's...imaginitive, deeply moving triumph' Ms LondonUS REVIEWS:'A work of art' New York Post'Intelligent, searching and unusual, the novel is filled with luminous moments; like the painting it describes so well, it has a way of lingering in the reader's mind' New York Times Book Review'Subtle and atmospheric...an impressive debut' Publishers Weekly'Wonderful...extraordinarily skilled...deft, perceptive...deeply moving' Kirkus Reviews'Wonderful' Salon.com
"Pearls were a favorite item of Vermeer," observes Cornelius Engelbrecht, the secretive and obsessive professor whose conviction that he owns an authentic Vermeer launches Vreeland's lovely first novel. The painting, we soon discover, was taken from its proper (Jewish) owner by Engelbrecht's father, a German soldier during World War IIÄa fact that Engelbrecht struggles mightily to suppress. The one colleague to whom he shows the painting guesses the truth and derisively recommends that he burn itÄ"one good burning deserves another"Äbut we don't learn the fate of the painting. Instead, Vreeland constructs a series of vignettes, not necessarily chronological, that takes us from the rooftops of Amsterdam Jews forced to kill the pigeons they are no longer allowed to keep, to a Dutch merchant whose possession of the painting briefly complicates his marriage, to the boudoir of a French counsel's bored wife and the second story of a farmhouse in flooded Holland, and finally to the home of Vermeer himself, where art does battle with domestic necessity. Though the connections among the vignettes could be made clearer, and the ending feels abruptÄhow did that painting get from the artist to the weary professor, and what finally happens to it?Äeach vignette has the stillness, the polish, and the balanced perfection of a Vermeer. Not quite perfect, but definitely a pearl. Griet, the "girl with the pearl earring," may be a pearl herselfÄfair, soberminded, and gentleÄbut the novel in which we find her is not quite so polished. Chevalier (The Virgin Blue) writes a little plainly of her heroine, forced when her father is blinded in an accident to work as a maid in the home of Vermeer. Eventually, Vermeer asks her to pose for a paintingÄwearing his wife's earringsÄwhich causes a scandal and Griet's determined departure from the household. The artist's coaxing of the reluctant sitter is delicately rendered, but otherwise this text fails to ignite.ÄBarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
UK REVIEWS:'This is not just another book with a Vermeer on the dust jacket...It is an illuminating meditation on the nature of art....This beautifully imagined and written book...is a work of art itself' Sunday Telegraph'Susan Vreeland's...imaginitive, deeply moving triumph' Ms LondonUS REVIEWS:'A work of art' New York Post'Intelligent, searching and unusual, the novel is filled with luminous moments; like the painting it describes so well, it has a way of lingering in the reader's mind' New York Times Book Review'Subtle and atmospheric...an impressive debut' Publishers Weekly'Wonderful...extraordinarily skilled...deft, perceptive...deeply moving' Kirkus Reviews'Wonderful' Salon.com
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