Looking Back - Girl with A Pearl Earring

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Fiction

2001 Penguin Books (first published in 1999)

Finished on July 31, 2001

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries—and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant—and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model.

My Original Thoughts (2001):

Historical fiction. Very readable. Engrossing! Sexual tension. Emotionally charged. Wonderful characterization. I read it with an article full of Vermeer's paintings beside me. Very enlightening about the actual thought process of a painter and the mechanics involved in painting. Would read again.

My Current Thoughts: 

I don't know if I read it a second time, nor do I remember if I watched the movie.