The Miniaturist: A Novel

As advertised, in very good condition. I have ordered from HPB and affiliates dozens of times, and always good quality.

***Kind of spoiler-ish***This was a great read! It did bring up one question that was not answered to my satisfaction though: Who was the Miniaturist, exactly?I loved the dark, growing menace of the story. All of the characters were well-developed, with me having different impressions and feelings about each of them:Nella (the main character): Young, naive, and growing into her own (even though she sometimes appeared older and wiser than her years in dealing with the various problems presented)Johannes, Nella's new husband: A rich merchant in his late 30's. I had a love/hate relationship with this alluring. philosophical man. He was distant, but kind. Too bad that his selfishness to keep on doing what he wanted to do in the face of their very strict society almost brought about the complete ruin of the family.Marin, Johannes sister: Cold, distant, and kinda' crazy. She did have some redeeming qualities, though, when she wasn't flying off the handle.Otto: A black manservant within the household. Like Johannes, he had a quiet dignity about him. Out of all of the characters, to me ( with the exception of one big No-No) he had the most sense.Cornelia: The maidservant/cook. Just a few years older than Nella, she was likeable, even when she mouthed-off at times.Frans and Agnes Meermans: A pompous, jealous couple who were immediately unlikeable. The fact that Frans used to be Johannes' close friend made it all worse.Jack: A young English dude. Gorgeous, devious, and downright crazy.Burton has a gorgeous way with words; her prose was damn near poetic. Reading the suspense that was 'The Miniaturist' was like plucking away at the petals of a floribunda rose. 4.5 stars!

Amsterdam in the 17th century might be considered one of the major characters in this book. The description of daily life, the canals and streets as they must have looked then, the intolerance of a strict Calvinistic church along with the ins and outs, moral and immoral, of the thriving trade with the far East seem to be well-researched and described in detail.There are two aspects of the book, however, that gave me some pause. First, the central characters are amazingly free of prejudice and selfishness. They are members of a religion lacking in acceptance, and yet possess an amazingly 21st century tolerance. I liked them for that, but I think they lived too far removed from what was at that time acceptable and expected. The servants are treated as family, homosexuality is easily accepted in the household, and the birth of a biracial child isn't a problem too large to just brush aside. I was not convinced that such a household might openly exist in the Amsterdam of the time.I also felt that the story had a great deal of potential that was not realized. A mysterious woman seems to know the intimacies of the family, including a remarkable insight into their futures. She is seen only a few times, at the edge of a crowd, or just turning a corner. We never meet her, never learn why she chooses to carve tiny images of the lives in this home, including details that are at first unknown to anyone else. I think this gifted wood carver, who is really a significant side character in the story, has an unwritten story of her own.I was also not comfortable with the death of the head of the household. I suppose the reactions to the death are not out of time and place and beliefs of the time, but it is a major death of a major citizen, the result of a betrayal. And then everyone just goes home. I wanted a battle, a rescue, a recanting of the betrayal--but it is simply a death that should not have happened.So--many points for choosing to bring to life a very prosperous city at the height of its imperial powers. But, the plot is unfulfilled. Might it be too much to ask for a sequel?

I enjoyed this book as a run up to our trip to Amsterdam. The wrap-around structure set up abd resolved the mysteries. Love the strong women.

For me this book fell somewhere in-between a historical novel and a fantasy. The writing was superb but I found myself uncomfortable with the many times that author Jessie Burton asked me to forgo common sense and accept the wild outrageous plot points that this story depended upon.While I loved the descriptions of the life and times of seventeenth century Amsterdam I questioned the ability of the miniaturist to foresee the future. Who was this person? How did the miniatures get altered? This was never explained. Why did she vanish half way through the book? Maybe there was something I missed. Did Johannes actually have a carnal encounter in an alley? Wasn’t he smarter than that? The father of Marin’s baby seemed obvious to me from the first mention that she was with child.It is hard for me to explain my feelings towards this book. Nella, Marin, Cornelia, Otto, Johannes all seemed to be operating independent of each other yet somehow the book held me captive. I fell into their lives and time from the oppression due to the religious fervor of the period to the description of Marin’s fur underpants (now there is a whole research project in Literature 101).I think that if the author would have locked down her genre I’d have given this book more stars. There is very good writing in search of a genus.

In the autumn of 1686, eighteen-year-old Petronella (Nella) Oortman leaves her country home and arrives at the Amsterdam house of her new (and much older) husband, the wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt - a man she barely knows. At his house on the Golden Bend of the Herengracht Canal, Nella meets Johannes' unmarried sister, the domineering Marin, who lives with Johannes and runs his household and, up to a point, his life. Nella feels gauche and somewhat inadequate when faced with Marin's confidence and practicality, and when Johannes presents his young wife with the wedding gift of a cabinet-sized replica of her new home, Nella feels he is treating her as if she is a child. Realizing that her husband, who has not yet consummated their marriage, is trying to be kind, Nella contacts by letter a miniaturist, a maker of miniature furniture, and commissions some pieces for her cabinet house. However, when the pieces arrive, Nella is surprised by how true-to-life they are, and when further uncommissioned pieces arrive, including some dolls which are uncannily like the inhabitants of her household - even down to aspects about them that no one outside the family would be aware - Nella begins to feel uneasy and then rather frightened. And when she discovers something shocking about her husband, Nella realizes that her new life and the tentative relationship she had been gradually building with Johannes, is in danger of collapsing - and, even more worryingly, is the fact that Johannes is putting his reputation and even his own life at risk.A compelling and beautifully observed story with some wonderfully atmospheric descriptions of 17th century Holland, this debut novel from Jessie Burton doesn’t read like a first novel at all. All of the characters are interesting and well-portrayed (although I would have liked to have seen their emotions explored more fully) and much of the story was so exquisitely described that this novel, with its themes of gender, sexuality, race and religion, kept me involved from start to finish. I read this book for the first time a few years’ ago, but I wanted to reread it in order to remind myself of the story before starting the sequel (‘The House of Fortune’) and I’m pleased to say I enjoyed it just as much, if not more, than the first time around.5 Stars.

Never solved the main mystery of the miniaturist. Leaves a lot of plots unsolved, at the beginning is good but as you continue it only gets worst. Trying to hard on the motives behind the secrecy of each character.

Tragic story with lots of twists in the plot. Surely a page turner. It had me feeling that world is better for women now. The starting made me feel that it was Rebecca set in 17th century Amsterdam but it wasn't. Overall a nice story.

Fantastic story that will sweep you away back to Amsterdam's golden age. This page-turner is well worth the read!

This book was absolutely fascinating to me. It opens in 1686 in Amsterdam. Nella aka Petronella Oortman, an eighteen year old farmer's daughter has arrived in Amsterdam to begin living with her new husband, Johannes Brandt. She has spent little time with him in the past only long enough to play the lute for him and then a rushed marriage sanctioned by her family. Brandt is a wealthy merchant and world traveler dabbling in the buying and selling of exotic goods from various ports around the known world.When she learns that her husband is not at home to greet her and his sister, Marin, a maid, and her husband's man servant are the only occupants of the enormous house, she begins to wonder what she has fallen into. Cornelia the maid is as unfriendly as her new sister-in-law. And Otto, is a man like Nella has never seen before in her life, with his dark brown skin and soft wool hair. None of them makes her feel welcome but ensconce her in her own sumptuous bedroom that does not include anything of her new husbands. Only then does she realizes she won't be sharing a marital bedroom with Johannes.This book is well written and contains many secrets and mysteries that both the protagonist Nella and the reader strive to solve. One of the biggest mysteries involves the miniaturist whose tiny carvings begin to fill her dollhouse-like cabinet. The miniatures seem to have a life of their own and maybe trying to tell Nella something.I stayed up late to read this book and woke up early to finish it. Don't let the historical date scare you off. This is as modern a story as anything that happens today.