Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
An interesting if somewhat implausible tale of a young merchant's wife in 17th century Amsterdam, which reads like "Jane Eyre" as rewritten by a Women's Studies undergraduate. Rather too overwritten for my tastes, with a lot of anachronistically modern sounding characters and dialogue. I get the appeal of these kinds of books - exotic locations, enough period detail to make it feel like a brainy read, and a femme-friendly take on history - but it's not for me.
Exquisite! Such a beautiful exploration of love and the lies we tell ourselves and others
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood
Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Murder
Minor: Torture, Excrement, Vomit
Better than the Apple TV mini series based on the book. Dark and ironically relatable given today’s political situation.
The storytelling is great - I couldn’t put it down.
But I still have many questions and I’m not really sure what we’ve resolved/learned in this story?
But I still have many questions and I’m not really sure what we’ve resolved/learned in this story?
very well-written but slightly frustrating by the end. i saw another review mention that you could take out the story of the miniatures and the main plotline would not be affected. which is true. it feels like two stories that don't quite connect, and one is actually never actually explained.
Really like 2.75. Good story telling, but I can’t help feeling like had there been no miniaturist the story would have been…exactly the same. All in all, it was kind of a let down.
Content warnings and some spoilers in second half of review.
Half historical novel, half mystery, “The Miniaturist” is told from the perspective of Nella, the teenage bride of a wealthy Dutch East India Company merchant who comes to 1680s Amsterdam to live with her new husband and his family. Nella starts to receive unordered and unnervingly true-to-life miniatures for the dollhouse she’s been given as a wedding present, both dolls and props so accurate to their real life counterparts that she starts to feel like she’s being spied upon. From outside, the oppressive Calvinist society also starts to breathe down the necks of everyone in the household.
I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. The twists and ending were not at all what I was expecting.
Content warnings/spoilers below.
The birth scene was absolutely brutal. I felt so horribly for Nella and Cornelia, two teenagers who had no idea how to help and had no way to know that the placenta not coming out was a very bad sign.
The Miniaturist herself, everyone takes her for supernatural, as a prophetess, but she’s just “observant” and deeply dedicated to her tiny craft. Her father says that she has always been this way, even as a small child. At least for me, this reads as some kind of intentional neurodivergence, perhaps ASD. Obviously the 17th century Dutch would not have had the words for it, so of course a city full of deeply religious and repressed people would take it for some kind of magic. Maybe I am already primed to see this angle, being neurodivergent myself, but I’m honestly surprised at the amount of reviews I’m seeing where readers finish the book still thinking the woman is magical, when the whole point is that she wasn’t, that people see what they want to see.
Half historical novel, half mystery, “The Miniaturist” is told from the perspective of Nella, the teenage bride of a wealthy Dutch East India Company merchant who comes to 1680s Amsterdam to live with her new husband and his family. Nella starts to receive unordered and unnervingly true-to-life miniatures for the dollhouse she’s been given as a wedding present, both dolls and props so accurate to their real life counterparts that she starts to feel like she’s being spied upon. From outside, the oppressive Calvinist society also starts to breathe down the necks of everyone in the household.
I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. The twists and ending were not at all what I was expecting.
Content warnings/spoilers below.
The birth scene was absolutely brutal. I felt so horribly for Nella and Cornelia, two teenagers who had no idea how to help and had no way to know that the placenta not coming out was a very bad sign.
The Miniaturist herself, everyone takes her for supernatural, as a prophetess, but she’s just “observant” and deeply dedicated to her tiny craft. Her father says that she has always been this way, even as a small child. At least for me, this reads as some kind of intentional neurodivergence, perhaps ASD. Obviously the 17th century Dutch would not have had the words for it, so of course a city full of deeply religious and repressed people would take it for some kind of magic. Maybe I am already primed to see this angle, being neurodivergent myself, but I’m honestly surprised at the amount of reviews I’m seeing where readers finish the book still thinking the woman is magical, when the whole point is that she wasn’t, that people see what they want to see.
I found this book to be slow and confusing, so much so that a book that should have taken me about two day has taken me nearly a week to finish.
This book was utterly predictable down to the smallest details, yet it was warm and rich enough to make it a big book that was hard to put down and NOT finish in one day. Worth reading if only for the illustration of the dichotomy between the wealth and freedom of Amsterdam and its citizens at the time and the austerity and oppression preached and valued by its religion.