I really enjoyed this book. It was surprisingly quick but, in just a few pages, I was sort of drawn in. I wanted to know what would happen next. I enjoyed the love story, the silent sweep of the unspoken draw of two people. Very alluring and mysterious. I'm glad I took the time to read it. ( )

Review to follow ( )

Girl With a Pearl Earring - Chevalier
5 stars

I first read this one when the movie came out. Tracy Chevalier has become a favorite author over the years. I wanted to reread the book to see how well it compared with her more recent books. I think this one stands up very well against her other work. It may still be the best of them.

My memories of the book were confused with the film. The film was beautiful, but the book is better at capturing Griet as a complex character whose life choices are severely constrained. This is what Chevalier does best. She gives rich interior lives to female characters who live with societal limitations. . ( )

Highly sensual without being actually sexual. A window onto the methods of 17th century artists, specifically Vermeer. Very well done. ( )

I had a copy of this on my TBR pile, so I am happy to be able to cross this one off of this list, and to put the book in one of our nearby little free libraries, for someone else to read. Probably everyone else here has read this one? Historical fiction about a young woman working as a maid for Vermeer. I was really enjoying the book at first, for the depiction of life in the Netherlands in 1664. In the end, I felt there was a lot of housecleaning and laundry, and not enough plot. So, 3 1/2 stars. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyable. I won't go so far as to say it's a new Wuthering Heights or anything, but it was only on later reflection did I feel like there was a missed opportunity for this book to become a classic. The maid was fittingly painted in brilliant color, Vermeer (but only his shadow) in bold dark relief, but the other characters were maybe a little flat. I couldn't help but be disappointed in Maria Thins who seemed to lose depth by the end. And what a steamy, creative, and unnecessary sex scene! ( )

While I definitely enjoyed the book and thought that the premise was terrific, I found that Griet's prudishness - which really only served to lengthen a book which could have been quite shorter - got on my nerves. All other facets, however, were lovely: the description of Vermeer's works, his work method, the comings and goings of the household including jealousies and intrigues, Griet's family and its troubles - all were interesting, fluid, and sounded true to the times.
It's a beautiful testimony to the world-known painting and a well-imagined tale rooted in art history. ( )

Overall I enjoyed the book but I was a bit annoyed with Griet's thought patterns toward the end.

I found Griet to be almost too smart for her background and then too love-struck and silly when it came to "her master". It was an easy, light read, not too complicated. ( )

I really only read this to figure out why Scarlett Johannsen kept gasping in the movie. It's... a lot better than the movie, that's the best I can say. ( )

Excellent, slim novel!
Review to follow ( )

Loved it! Nice story. ( )

I grabbed this book off the shelf after watching the documentary "Tim's Vermeer." I was hoping for a portrait of the artist, and Chevalier definitely brings the reader into Vermeer's studio, but so little is known about him that the resulting character is pretty thin.

It was an enjoyable read. The prose is what they call lyrical, I believe. The drama is believable for the most part. And the glimpse into 17th century Dutch life is delightful.

I'd recommend the book for anyone interested in Vermeer, 17th century Holland, or novels of education with female protagonists. ( )

Ok, maybe I am getting soft with my ratings . . .I am usually not handing out five stars left and right . . .but I thought this book was a lovely little treat.

Griet is a young girl who must leave her family home in order to earn some money to help support her blind father. She ends up working for the household of the painter, Vermeer, as a maid. Griet is overcome by her master's artistry and her fascination with his art soon becomes transferred to the artist.

This book is a wonderful book about sexual tension - - without the usual graphic language and images. Chevalier writes of lust, jealousy, and deception in a way that is just more suspenseful and intriguing than usual. This book isn't a big bold story. It's more of a little gem that you want to keep peeking at. I peeked so much I finished the book in a couple of days.

Fascinating characters, unique historical setting, and tension, tension, tension - - all in a tight package - - what more can you ask? ( )

I enjoy learning more about people who lived earlier through historical fiction very much. It makes the story not so dull and makes the people described more real. However, I have to say that this book turned out to be more fiction than history. I was a bit disappointed to learn that the author made up the whole story of a servant girl in the painting. And even if not take it into account, the story itself was too flat. It was dragging out and at the same time was describing the events rather superficially. So it wasn't bad, but it wasn't an immersive read either. ( )

I enjoyed this one - it's an imagined account of the backstory of Vermeer's painting _Girl With a Pearl Earring_. It was a relatively quick listen. The narrator did a nice job. One line toward the end of the book was so artless and annoying, though, I almost lowered my rating. ("And in MY pearl earrings?!" - seriously? So soap opera-like. Bleh.) ( )

The intensity of this book, especially given its rather mundane setting and protagonist, astonished me. The pacing of the story, the slow build-up of emotion, and the inevitable climax made this an engrossing and satisfying read. But that’s not to say that everything is clear at the end. The painter himself is still a mystery in many ways, a fact that many other reviewers rightfully note and critique. Given the title, I believe the novel is in fact not about Vermeer at all but about Griet and even more so about the painting itself. In that regard, the novel expresses a vivid interpretation of the painting that is compelling and believable. I know nothing about art and have little appreciation for it, but this book actually made me regret that.

4/5 stars purely because of how many times people were used and lied to without regard to the consequences and often unnecessarily. While this is somewhat true to life, the author treated it far too cavalierly for my taste. ( )

A heart-wrenching novel with deep thoughts and stunning visuals. ( )

This is not a badly written book, though I agree with another reviewer that not enough was made of the setting. More important to me though, and why I gave it a low rating, is that I think the success of the narrative hinges on whether there exists a palpable sexual tension between Griet and Vermeer, and whether you’re convinced that what’s going on between them is obvious to the other members of the household. Unfortunately, if it did exist, I just wasn’t feeling it, and so none of the characters’ behaviour made much sense to me. I also think I sympathised with Vermeer’s wife more than I was supposed to. A lot of people obviously love this book though so perhaps I was missing something. ( )

The author has imagined a scenario behind the famous Vermeer painting of the same name. The book describes life in the Dutch city of Delft in the 1600s. It is centered around a household and an artist, so it is not full of action. It's more of a cerebral book. Recommended to those who enjoy novels about art, art history or life in the 17th century. ( )

Girl With a Pearl Earring is such a beautifully written book with a compelling story. I find the story about young Griet working for Johannes Vermeer fascinating. How Tracy Chevalier used the painting of Girl with a Pearl Earring to weave such a fantastic story. Griet is just an ordinary girl, needing to work after her father had an accident and how her life changed after she came to the Vermeer household. it's not an easy position, it's only Johannes Vermeer that she's not having a problem with. And, I love that it doesn't turn out to be a cheesy forbidden love story. It goes deeper than that. I just love this book. ( )

Boeiend en mooi geschreven verhaal over Griet die als dienstmeisje gaat werken bij Johannes Vermeer. Hoewel ze door het gezin wordt tegengewerkt, wordt ze eerst zijn assistente en later ook zijn model. Dat wordt haar fataal en zij moet het huis verlaten. ( )

A fictional tale about famous artist Vermeer and his unique painting style and subjects. The painting titled "Girl with a Pearl Earring," is reason for the tale. She is a young maid hired to be Vermeer's wife's maid, but Vermeer has an interest in her as well.

It was well written, and I was pulled in enough to not stop and I did think about it when I wasn't reading. But early on I was more intrigued by another book, so put this aside for a bit, and then obviviously picked it back up. ( )

This book is like fan fiction for Vemeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring." It's a story about how the girl pictured in this painting came to Vemeer's house as a maid, helped Vemeer grind paint colors, was requested by Vemeer's patron buyer to sit for a portrait, raised jealousy from Vemeer's wife, and ultimately resigned from the family as a maid to marry and start a family. The girl loved art, and she had a crush on Vemeer. She often had to struggle between her yearning for art and her constraints as a working-class girl who needs to focus on supporting her family through manual labor. Ultimately she resigned herself to marriage to a fellow-working class man and loved her children and family. I'm glad she became content at the end, and I probably would have done the same myself. But it would have been great if she had had chance to live a life that pursued art. I admire her for her strong capabilities to do everything that comes to her path so well, whether it's laundry, cleaning, grinding paint, understanding art, or butchering.

Read this for a book club and really enjoyed the experience! ( )

The book was well-written and mostly was good, but I was disappointed in some of it. ( )

Abandoned after one third of the book, probably.

I was really really planning to love this book because I really really love the movie. But no.

After suffering with it for a couple of days I realized it would be better to just stop and leave it before I actually begin to hate the main character so much that it ruins the movie for me too. ( )