Girl With A Pearl Earring

This was a book that I was not looking forward to reading.  This was probably based on unfair reasons. Rightly or wrongly, I associated in my mind with a book that I really disliked and found turgid and dull in the extreme. Now whether the author of this book had written a glowing review gobbet on the cover, or whether I just linked the names I don’t know. I just wasn’t enthralled by the idea of it.

 But it was chosen for my book group, I already had it on my shelves, and even more importantly, it would fit easily into my Century of Books.

Well, how wrong can you be? I really enjoyed this. From the beginning I was gripped. I found Greit an engaging heroine, and I genuinely cared about what was going to happen to her (for there was always the feeling, right from the beginning that something was going to happen to her). It was suspenseful, and at some times heart-breaking – when her favourite tile got broken, it brought tears to my eyes, and that image stayed with me in every interaction she had with her family from that point onwards. The dynamics of the house and the different power struggles contained therein made for tense reading. The book didn’t go down the road I thought it might (and if it had, it would have been much worse for it), or at least it did, but only symbolically. While I don’t need any kind of happy ending in the books I read, I cared enough that Griet made her way in the world, and that the experiences she had did not lead to her ruin.

What was an interesting aspect was that the novel chose the name of the actual painting as its title, and not The Girl With A Pearl Earring as I kept calling it. The whole book then served as a painting. As often happens at book groups, people had different editions with different covers. Mine is the one at the top of this entry, which I felt was the more powerful, as it put Griet at the centre. An alternative is this one:

I found it less powerful, as it diluted the focus for me. Others preferred it as it gave a glimpse into the studio, something which was not accorded to all the characters in the novel.

I would probably not have read this had it not been for someone choosing it for book group and me already having a copy on my shelves. So, lesson learned. Don’t be put off a book because of some mistaken connection.