Book Review: Girl With a Pearl Earring



Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, is a beautiful book.

Of course, Chevalier started with a pretty great topic. She chose one of Vermeer’s few paintings (his lifetime limit was about 35), also named Girl with a Pearl Earring, an unusual painting because it shows only the girl’s face; all the background is black.

But the face speaks volumes! She’s looking over her left shoulder at the artist, and her face is filled with something: hope, hopelessness, longing, fear.

So Chevalier made up the story behind the painting. The girl tells her own tale, in First Person point of view. She is a real person, as is Vermeer, Catharina, his wife, and his daughters. The odd thing is…she truly was a real person, and somehow that reality (and the publisher’s wise decision to use her image on the cover) allows the modern reader to set aside disbelief all the sooner.

The family lives in 17th-century Holland, and during the time you are reading, so do you. In Chevalier’s view, Griet is a maid, hired out after her father (a Delft china painter) is blinded by a kiln explosion and cannot work.

Her helplessness in the situation is heartbreaking. The mistress, one of the daughters, and the other maid want her gone, and actively plot to destroy her livelihood, if not her life. Griet is bright and clever. She recognizes the danger, and handles the others like a master psychologist, but ultimately the only thing that will save her job is Vermeer’s favor. And the more he appears to favor her, the more the other women in the household resent her and want her gone.

To make it worse, Vermeer’s patron, infamous for ruining young maids, has noticed Griet. He wants Vermeer to paint her, with him, and everyone knows he means to seduce her, and to hell with the consequences (since, after all, they aren’t his to pay, but hers).

I’d recommend reading this book near a computer with bookmarked sites like Essential Vermeer. Many of his paintings come up in the course the book, and it’s helpful to have them to refer to, a la the illustrated edition of The Da Vinci Code.

I cannot praise this book enough. Characters, plot, setting, theme…it’s all there. But you won’t notice the author’s skill because you’ll become a 16-year-old maid in Delft, Holland in 1664, just trying to make a life.