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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Aug 2014, 416 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2015, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Sarah Sacha Dollacker
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Enchanting, beautiful, and exquisitely suspenseful, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.
Set in seventeenth century Amsterdam - a city ruled by glittering wealth and oppressive religion - a masterful debut steeped in atmosphere and shimmering with mystery, in the tradition of Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters, and Sarah Dunant.
"There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed..."
On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office - leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.
But Nella's world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist - an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways...
Johannes' gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand - and fear - the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation... or the architect of their destruction?
Enchanting, beautiful, and exquisitely suspenseful, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.
Mid-October 1686
The Herengracht canal, Amsterdam
Outside In
On the step of her new husband's house, Nella Oortman lifts and drops the dolphin knocker, embarrassed by the thud. No one comes, though she is expected. The time was prearranged and letters written, her mother's paper so thin compared with Brandt's expensive vellum. No, she thinks, this is not the best of greetings, given the blink of a marriage ceremony the month before—no garlands, no betrothal cup, no wedding bed. Nella places her small trunk and birdcage on the step. She knows she'll have to embellish this later for home, when she's found a way upstairs, a room, a desk.
Nella turns to the canal as bargemen's laughter rises up the opposite brickwork. A puny lad has skittled into a woman and her basket of fish, and a half-dead herring slithers down the wide front of the seller's skirt. The harsh cry of her country voice runs under Nella's skin. "Idiot! Idiot!" the woman yells....
The novel pulses with anticipation as Nella gets closer to determining the truth behind the miniaturist’s gifts and the secrets in her own home, but the ending fades away without a satisfying wrap up. Despite this, the absorbing characters and convincing historical atmosphere make The Miniaturist worth the read...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Sarah Sacha Dollacker).
S.J. Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep
The Miniaturist is that rarest of things - beautifully written, yet also a compelling page-turner. It's haunting, magical, and full of surprises, the kind of book that reminds you why you fell in love with reading.Like Nella in The Miniaturist, the real Petronella Oortman ordered a cabinet house to be made in 1686 to the exact scale of her own home. It can still be seen today in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Petronella's cabinet house was elaborate, gilded with silver and inlaid with tortoise shell, but this was not a unique purchase for a woman of her time.
Both wealthy men and women in 17th century Amsterdam kept cabinets full of exquisite trinkets to celebrate their status. Men's cabinets were usually called curiosity or wonder cabinets. They displayed items from anywhere in the world the Dutch traded. Women's cabinets were oversized dollhouses, but were certainly not toys. While a man's cabinet exhibited the bounty of Amsterdam...
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