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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
Actual Rating 4.5
Well this was really sad. I was not expecting to have my heart shredded in the reading of this! The writing was so lovely and I really grew attached to all of the characters and the magical and melodramatic mystery happening. My one complaint is that the ending was a bit open for a story like this and I found the beginning to be very slow, hence it not getting a higher rating. That aside this is such a lovely and intriguing story that is truly unique!
Well this was really sad. I was not expecting to have my heart shredded in the reading of this! The writing was so lovely and I really grew attached to all of the characters and the magical and melodramatic mystery happening. My one complaint is that the ending was a bit open for a story like this and I found the beginning to be very slow, hence it not getting a higher rating. That aside this is such a lovely and intriguing story that is truly unique!
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The central mystery is never particularly resolved or the miniaturist’s motivations. Nearly everything would have happened without the inclusion of the miniaturist
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Infidelity, Torture, Police brutality
Minor: Slavery, Stalking
How disappointing. I couldn't agree more with the reviewer who said that it was readable, but empty. I can't imagine being more bored with a book, yet for some reason I kept reading.
I enjoyed the mysterious twists and turns, some of which were never quite explained.
Interesting and great story line..some stand out scenes.
SPOILERS throughout!
Format: audiobook (Libby) and physical copy from the library.
Felt mysterious to start with but the supernatural element wasn't developed in a satisfactory way, it was not central to the plot as we are led to believe by the title or constant references to the seemingly all knowing mysterious woman. It would have benefited with more planning - certainly didn't warrant titling the book, 'The Miniaturist', when the lense was so clearly focused on the protagonist Nella.
What was the the message of the book? That things change [the epitaph Nella inscribes on Marin's tombstone "T'can vekeeren"?; that we are in control of our destiny and must carve out our own future? These are the messages the novel concludes with. Nella is to stop looking for the Miniaturist's clues and guidance through the dolls house items sent to her. Instead she must mature from the sheltered, uneducated 18 year old into the mistress of her own house and destiny. But this message rings hollow. For none of the other characters can carve out their future successfully.
- The cook was luckily plucked out of a cruel orphange/life to live the rest of her days in servitude in a kinder environment, but still, surely not a future of her own making or wishes.
- Hanna, the wife and business partner to the baker Arnoud has to navigate and manipulate within her own marriage, so that her husband listens to her; but she's clearly not happy, she's plotting to send him off on long business trips so she can have some peace without him.
- The ex slave Otto too is restricted and confined to their house amidst a hostile external world.
- Marin (the spinster sister) despite all her childhood dreams of maps, travel and trade, is chained to managing the family business from within the house; further although she never wanted to marry in her youth, yet in her later years she knew she could never marry her new love Otto and raise a child with him, instead they must hide their secret.
- The husband Johannes, seemed disallusioned and rejected being the master of his life (he had a warehouse full to the brim of unsold goods, seemed to hate the mechant's life of travelling and selling, losing himself to getting drunk and illicit sexual encounters with other men; which culminates with him being falsely accused of violently attacking Jack and then drowned with a milstone around his neck for sodomy).
None of them are carving out the future they wish for themselves. None of them are "free".
The only consolation is the narrator hints at a brighter future for Nella, one of her own choosing where she is mistress of this inherited fortune and that she goes on to find love by marrying again (reference to her first wedding night, as if there will be a 2nd). But in a time where a woman's assets get transferred to her husband's control upon marriage and she could easily die in childbirth or burnt for witchcraft...things do indeed change and not in favour of the woman. How much control is Nella likely to actually have in reality? I think that's where the more interesting story would have been, what Nella did next. How did she assert her will in such adversity?
Johannes' burial jarred for me. He was buried it seems with his sister Marin inside the church. Why would Pastor Pellicorne who was baying for his death due to sodomy allow his body inside the church, especially as he seemed so against even Marin being buried inside the church due to overcrowding? Was this an oversight by the author? Or was it to show the pastor's hyprocracy and corruption (easily bought by money, "his eyes flicking to the guilders" as he was persuaded for Marin's p400).
I've given the novel a three because I did enjoy parts of the book, Nella and Cornelia's characters and the author's way with words, but it wasn't strong in enough in plot, character development or conclusion to warrant four stars or a reread. I won't acquire the sequel to this book - The House of Fortune as it concentrates more on the grown up baby Thea.
Plot summary notes:
Setting/time period: Amersterdam, Mid-October 1687 to 14th January 1688 (3 months span).
The novel opens with a prologue set 3 months in the future that upon first reading doesn't make any sense (but upon completion we realise was full of foreshadowing). It's a funeral, as readers we are not told whose save it's "supposeded to be a quiet affair" for a man who "had no friends", yet the church is full, they "approach the gaping grave like ants toward the honey". The third sentence alerts us to someone observing the proceedings cautiously, hidden from "the safety of the choir stall". [***Who is she? The miniaturist. ***Why is the observer scared herself? Probably due to her mystical future predictions she could be accused and killed for withcraft] "She finds her object at the centre - the grief stricken girl - and that some have "reservations about this funeral" [***why?]. It will be Pellicorne's doing, she supposes. [***who is he?] "Same old poison in the ear" [***what has been said to lead to a man's death? Who would have that power?]. As a reader, we have so many questions and can't guess anything just yet.
Then we time shift backwards 3 months to 18 year old Petronella - Nella - arriving "On the step of her new husband's house", nervous and unsure of herself and greeted only by her unwelcoming, sharp tongued sister-in-law Marin Brandt.
Nella settles into her strange life of secrets in the Brandt house, as a wife to a man who is absent from home, doesn't wish to consumate their marrige and treats her as a child (gifting her a dolls house instead of himself). The house is also home to two loyal servants: Otto an ex slave (from Surinam) and Cornelia the housekeeper/cook. Nella struggles to understand how to navigate her new life and seeks answers from the elusive miniaturist who she corresponds with to craft objects for her dolls house. Items of such perfect accuracy of her current home life - both in appearance and prescient quality - that Nella is determined to find the miniaturist to demand answers.
Meanwhile the plot weaves as thus: The Brandt family finances are not what they should be. A warehouse is full of unsold stock that Johannes Brandt either doesn't wish to or can't sell. Johannes seems to console himself and escape his responsibilities in an illegal homosexual affair with an opportunistic English man named Jack. Nella is shocked to discover them and struggles to regain her composure. “The image of Johannes and Jack Philips thrummed for days inside Nella's skull, like a moth with constantly beating wings. Through the force of her own will Nella has made it flightless. She has stupefied it and removed its wings. But it has not disappeared.”
Marin encourages Johannes to end the dangerous affair and travel to sell and restore their finances.
In Johannes' absence, Jack feeling abandoned and probably financially vulnerable, confronts the women at their home: "You made him get rid of me" he accuses Marin. Whether from jealousy, desperation or anger he kills one of Johannes' dogs Rezeki ("Jack has driven in the dagger so hard that Cornelia's fingers cannot pull it out"). This was predicted, for Rezeki's miniature skull has a small red mark where he was stabbed by the dagger. Otto bravely protects the women, there is a skuffle and Jack is accidentally stabbed. Jack capitalises on this and intimates that he's going to twist the events from him being the agressor to the victim - accusing Otto - who then has to flee Amsterdam. Racism will result in Otto being damned and killed instead of being hailed a hero. Johannes returns to find Otto gone and his dog dead.
As the days/weeks progress, Johannes' old friend/rival (Frans Meermans) grows increasingly impatient at his unsold sugar languishing (and probably starting to rot) in Johannes' warehouse and when he witnesses Johannes with Jack, he testifies against him for sodomy - knowing this will result in death by drowning. Joahnnes is warned and attempts to flee but is caught, arrested, tortured in prison and is paraded in a sham court trial overseen by the powerful, puritanical Pastor Pellicorne.
Meanwhile, Nella - despite being a woman and very young - uses her business acumen and bravery to start selling the sugar to the bakers Hanna and her husband Arnoud who promises to find more buyers. Nella hopes to use the money as a peace offering to Frans to withdraw his witness testimony and to bribe Jack to leave. However, the money won't arrive in time and she realises that it money won't matter - Frans and Pellicorne want Johannes' death.
Marin's parallel plot unfurls, she's the disallusioned spinster sister, who spurned marrigae in her youth for dreams of fruitless freedom and travel. Marin is now trapped further, pregnant (as predicted by the miniaturist with her doll that concealed a baby under her dress) and unable to marry Otto - the father of the baby - due to societal racism. Marin goes into labour and seeks Nella's help due to necessity to keep the baby secret.
Nella's emotional and physical strength is stretched between attending her husband's trial and assisting Marin's secret labour. Despite Nella's best efforts to deliver baby Thea, there's a complication and Marin dies. Nella, imposes her will to have Marin buried inside the church - Pastor Pellicorne's initial objections erased with a large sum of money. Grief stricken with all these events, Nella comforts Johannes before his death in his cell. She keeps Marin's death and the new baby a secret, not wishing to burden him further.
The following day, Nella attends the drowning by the quayside, it is thronging with folk, "How can good people come and watch this?" Nella wonders. Unable to watch, but accosted with the brutal sounds of the millstone grating along the ground and the sound of it smashing into the "choppy water", she witnesses his death. When she opens her eyes Otto is there. It's a bittersweet home coming for him. His old friend and protector has been brutally killed, Marin has died, but he has his new baby daughter Thea and the welcome of his old friends Nella and Cornelia.
That's how the story ends, a vignette of Nella on the threshold of Brant House, hearing the sounds of domesticity and family inside, looking out across the canal up at the sky "a vast sea flowing between the roofs"... "It's depth infinite to Nella with possibility"...contemplating carving her future... "They are all loose threads - but that has ever been the case, thinks Nella. We make a hopeful tapestry; no one to weave it but ourselves...
The last sentence:
" 'Madame?' Cornelia calls...Nella steps inside."
QUOTES:
“The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighborly smothering of a person's spirit.”
“Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder.”
“From little seeds great flowers grow.”
“The more people who take part in a ritual, the more justified it seems.”
[When Agnes is taling to Nella:
“This is not a conversation, it is Agnes sending out darts and watching them pierce.”
“Perhaps this is fashionable conversation—combative and unsettling, passing for casual talk.”]
“You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care.”
Format: audiobook (Libby) and physical copy from the library.
Felt mysterious to start with but the supernatural element wasn't developed in a satisfactory way, it was not central to the plot as we are led to believe by the title or constant references to the seemingly all knowing mysterious woman. It would have benefited with more planning - certainly didn't warrant titling the book, 'The Miniaturist', when the lense was so clearly focused on the protagonist Nella.
What was the the message of the book? That things change [the epitaph Nella inscribes on Marin's tombstone "T'can vekeeren"?; that we are in control of our destiny and must carve out our own future? These are the messages the novel concludes with. Nella is to stop looking for the Miniaturist's clues and guidance through the dolls house items sent to her. Instead she must mature from the sheltered, uneducated 18 year old into the mistress of her own house and destiny. But this message rings hollow. For none of the other characters can carve out their future successfully.
- The cook was luckily plucked out of a cruel orphange/life to live the rest of her days in servitude in a kinder environment, but still, surely not a future of her own making or wishes.
- Hanna, the wife and business partner to the baker Arnoud has to navigate and manipulate within her own marriage, so that her husband listens to her; but she's clearly not happy, she's plotting to send him off on long business trips so she can have some peace without him.
- The ex slave Otto too is restricted and confined to their house amidst a hostile external world.
- Marin (the spinster sister) despite all her childhood dreams of maps, travel and trade, is chained to managing the family business from within the house; further although she never wanted to marry in her youth, yet in her later years she knew she could never marry her new love Otto and raise a child with him, instead they must hide their secret.
- The husband Johannes, seemed disallusioned and rejected being the master of his life (he had a warehouse full to the brim of unsold goods, seemed to hate the mechant's life of travelling and selling, losing himself to getting drunk and illicit sexual encounters with other men; which culminates with him being falsely accused of violently attacking Jack and then drowned with a milstone around his neck for sodomy).
None of them are carving out the future they wish for themselves. None of them are "free".
The only consolation is the narrator hints at a brighter future for Nella, one of her own choosing where she is mistress of this inherited fortune and that she goes on to find love by marrying again (reference to her first wedding night, as if there will be a 2nd). But in a time where a woman's assets get transferred to her husband's control upon marriage and she could easily die in childbirth or burnt for witchcraft...things do indeed change and not in favour of the woman. How much control is Nella likely to actually have in reality? I think that's where the more interesting story would have been, what Nella did next. How did she assert her will in such adversity?
Johannes' burial jarred for me. He was buried it seems with his sister Marin inside the church. Why would Pastor Pellicorne who was baying for his death due to sodomy allow his body inside the church, especially as he seemed so against even Marin being buried inside the church due to overcrowding? Was this an oversight by the author? Or was it to show the pastor's hyprocracy and corruption (easily bought by money, "his eyes flicking to the guilders" as he was persuaded for Marin's p400).
I've given the novel a three because I did enjoy parts of the book, Nella and Cornelia's characters and the author's way with words, but it wasn't strong in enough in plot, character development or conclusion to warrant four stars or a reread. I won't acquire the sequel to this book - The House of Fortune as it concentrates more on the grown up baby Thea.
Plot summary notes:
Setting/time period: Amersterdam, Mid-October 1687 to 14th January 1688 (3 months span).
The novel opens with a prologue set 3 months in the future that upon first reading doesn't make any sense (but upon completion we realise was full of foreshadowing). It's a funeral, as readers we are not told whose save it's "supposeded to be a quiet affair" for a man who "had no friends", yet the church is full, they "approach the gaping grave like ants toward the honey". The third sentence alerts us to someone observing the proceedings cautiously, hidden from "the safety of the choir stall". [***Who is she? The miniaturist. ***Why is the observer scared herself? Probably due to her mystical future predictions she could be accused and killed for withcraft] "She finds her object at the centre - the grief stricken girl - and that some have "reservations about this funeral" [***why?]. It will be Pellicorne's doing, she supposes. [***who is he?] "Same old poison in the ear" [***what has been said to lead to a man's death? Who would have that power?]. As a reader, we have so many questions and can't guess anything just yet.
Then we time shift backwards 3 months to 18 year old Petronella - Nella - arriving "On the step of her new husband's house", nervous and unsure of herself and greeted only by her unwelcoming, sharp tongued sister-in-law Marin Brandt.
Nella settles into her strange life of secrets in the Brandt house, as a wife to a man who is absent from home, doesn't wish to consumate their marrige and treats her as a child (gifting her a dolls house instead of himself). The house is also home to two loyal servants: Otto an ex slave (from Surinam) and Cornelia the housekeeper/cook. Nella struggles to understand how to navigate her new life and seeks answers from the elusive miniaturist who she corresponds with to craft objects for her dolls house. Items of such perfect accuracy of her current home life - both in appearance and prescient quality - that Nella is determined to find the miniaturist to demand answers.
Meanwhile the plot weaves as thus: The Brandt family finances are not what they should be. A warehouse is full of unsold stock that Johannes Brandt either doesn't wish to or can't sell. Johannes seems to console himself and escape his responsibilities in an illegal homosexual affair with an opportunistic English man named Jack. Nella is shocked to discover them and struggles to regain her composure. “The image of Johannes and Jack Philips thrummed for days inside Nella's skull, like a moth with constantly beating wings. Through the force of her own will Nella has made it flightless. She has stupefied it and removed its wings. But it has not disappeared.”
Marin encourages Johannes to end the dangerous affair and travel to sell and restore their finances.
In Johannes' absence, Jack feeling abandoned and probably financially vulnerable, confronts the women at their home: "You made him get rid of me" he accuses Marin. Whether from jealousy, desperation or anger he kills one of Johannes' dogs Rezeki ("Jack has driven in the dagger so hard that Cornelia's fingers cannot pull it out"). This was predicted, for Rezeki's miniature skull has a small red mark where he was stabbed by the dagger. Otto bravely protects the women, there is a skuffle and Jack is accidentally stabbed. Jack capitalises on this and intimates that he's going to twist the events from him being the agressor to the victim - accusing Otto - who then has to flee Amsterdam. Racism will result in Otto being damned and killed instead of being hailed a hero. Johannes returns to find Otto gone and his dog dead.
As the days/weeks progress, Johannes' old friend/rival (Frans Meermans) grows increasingly impatient at his unsold sugar languishing (and probably starting to rot) in Johannes' warehouse and when he witnesses Johannes with Jack, he testifies against him for sodomy - knowing this will result in death by drowning. Joahnnes is warned and attempts to flee but is caught, arrested, tortured in prison and is paraded in a sham court trial overseen by the powerful, puritanical Pastor Pellicorne.
Meanwhile, Nella - despite being a woman and very young - uses her business acumen and bravery to start selling the sugar to the bakers Hanna and her husband Arnoud who promises to find more buyers. Nella hopes to use the money as a peace offering to Frans to withdraw his witness testimony and to bribe Jack to leave. However, the money won't arrive in time and she realises that it money won't matter - Frans and Pellicorne want Johannes' death.
Marin's parallel plot unfurls, she's the disallusioned spinster sister, who spurned marrigae in her youth for dreams of fruitless freedom and travel. Marin is now trapped further, pregnant (as predicted by the miniaturist with her doll that concealed a baby under her dress) and unable to marry Otto - the father of the baby - due to societal racism. Marin goes into labour and seeks Nella's help due to necessity to keep the baby secret.
Nella's emotional and physical strength is stretched between attending her husband's trial and assisting Marin's secret labour. Despite Nella's best efforts to deliver baby Thea, there's a complication and Marin dies. Nella, imposes her will to have Marin buried inside the church - Pastor Pellicorne's initial objections erased with a large sum of money. Grief stricken with all these events, Nella comforts Johannes before his death in his cell. She keeps Marin's death and the new baby a secret, not wishing to burden him further.
The following day, Nella attends the drowning by the quayside, it is thronging with folk, "How can good people come and watch this?" Nella wonders. Unable to watch, but accosted with the brutal sounds of the millstone grating along the ground and the sound of it smashing into the "choppy water", she witnesses his death. When she opens her eyes Otto is there. It's a bittersweet home coming for him. His old friend and protector has been brutally killed, Marin has died, but he has his new baby daughter Thea and the welcome of his old friends Nella and Cornelia.
That's how the story ends, a vignette of Nella on the threshold of Brant House, hearing the sounds of domesticity and family inside, looking out across the canal up at the sky "a vast sea flowing between the roofs"... "It's depth infinite to Nella with possibility"...contemplating carving her future... "They are all loose threads - but that has ever been the case, thinks Nella. We make a hopeful tapestry; no one to weave it but ourselves...
The last sentence:
" 'Madame?' Cornelia calls...Nella steps inside."
QUOTES:
“The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighborly smothering of a person's spirit.”
“Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder.”
“From little seeds great flowers grow.”
“The more people who take part in a ritual, the more justified it seems.”
[When Agnes is taling to Nella:
“This is not a conversation, it is Agnes sending out darts and watching them pierce.”
“Perhaps this is fashionable conversation—combative and unsettling, passing for casual talk.”]
“You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care.”
hopeful
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Solid book. Interesting story, beautiful language and leaves a lot to think about, but also doesn't really stand out to me personally.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death
Moderate: Alcoholism, Abortion
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes