Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier

The Virgin Blue - Tracy Chevalier

Four centuries apart, two women face hostility and suspicion from those around them because they are different. Isabelle is the daughter of the local wise woman, or midwife, and grows up helping to deliver babies. This knowledge and her red hair both mark her out as strange, a bit of a witch. She marries a man whose family, the Tourniers, hate her. Young American Ella Turner moves to France with her architect husband, and they settle in Lisle-sur-Tarn, a small town within commuting distance of his new job in Toulouse. Like Isabelle, Ella has worked as a midwife, but she must study for further exams before she ...

The Virgin Blue - Tracy Chevalier

Four centuries apart, two women face hostility and suspicion from those around them because they are different. Isabelle is the daughter of the local wise woman, or midwife, and grows up helping to deliver babies. This knowledge and her red hair both mark her out as strange, a bit of a witch. She marries a man whose family, the Tourniers, hate her. Young American Ella Turner moves to France with her architect husband, and they settle in Lisle-sur-Tarn, a small town within commuting distance of his new job in Toulouse. Like Isabelle, Ella has worked as a midwife, but she must study for further exams before she ...

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

The cover of the novel is graced with a painting by Johannes Vermeer of a young girl sitting turned away from the front but turning her fresh face back towards the artist. The background to the painting is dark so all attention is focussed on the subject. She is plainly dressed, her hair demurely covered but her moistened, parted lips suggest a more mature wisdom to life. Her eyes glisten and the same bright light is reflected in the pearl earring dangling from her left lobe. Chevalier has obviously been fascinated by this portrait and has written a novel describing the girl in the painting and how she came to be associated with Vermeer. As you get further into the book ...

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

The cover of the novel is graced with a painting by Johannes Vermeer of a young girl sitting turned away from the front but turning her fresh face back towards the artist. The background to the painting is dark so all attention is focussed on the subject. She is plainly dressed, her hair demurely covered but her moistened, parted lips suggest a more mature wisdom to life. Her eyes glisten and the same bright light is reflected in the pearl earring dangling from her left lobe. Chevalier has obviously been fascinated by this portrait and has written a novel describing the girl in the painting and how she came to be associated with Vermeer. As you get further into the book ...

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

This novel by UK based American Tracy Chevalier takes it title from the best known painting of 17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. In real life the origins of the painting are not fully known and the girl in the painting has never been satisfactorily identified. Tracy Chevalier uses this as her starting point in imagining a possible history for the painting based around the teenaged Griet, daughter of a blinded Delft tilemaker, forced to seek employment as a maid with the Vermeer household as a result of her father's accident. The novel is hard to categorise as it does not fall into any obvious genre - to call it historical fiction would be misleading ...

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

This novel by UK based American Tracy Chevalier takes it title from the best known painting of 17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. In real life the origins of the painting are not fully known and the girl in the painting has never been satisfactorily identified. Tracy Chevalier uses this as her starting point in imagining a possible history for the painting based around the teenaged Griet, daughter of a blinded Delft tilemaker, forced to seek employment as a maid with the Vermeer household as a result of her father's accident. The novel is hard to categorise as it does not fall into any obvious genre - to call it historical fiction would be misleading ...