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| Ms. Hen with the doll's house at the Museum of Fine Arts |
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton
Harper Collins
2014
Ms. Hen first learned about this novel through the PBS
miniseries. She didn’t watch the whole thing, she only watched a few minutes of
it. She doesn’t have patience to watch a TV show when it’s on TV; she prefers
to watch it on her own time. She went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
shortly after the show was aired, and in the Dutch 17th century
room, there was a doll’s house similar to the one on the show. The house is a
perfect tiny piece of art, and it looks like everything inside is real: real dishes,
real vases, tiny beds and chairs; it’s so adorable that Ms. Hen can gaze at it
for a long time. She went back to the museum as she was reading the novel to inspect
it further and take a picture with Ms. Hen.
She decided to read the novel because she wants to learn
about that time period, which is the same as another novel she read recently,
TULIP FEVER. But she thinks THE MINIATURIST is superior. It’s better written;
it’s not written in a thriller type of style, and it’s full of surprises.
Petronella comes to live in her husband, Johaness’ house
with his sister and his two servants. They were married in her town, and they
did not consummate their marriage when they were wed. She wonders if he does
not love her, or something is wrong because when she moves into his
house, he continues to treat her with indifference. She married him because her
family is poor, and she needs to survive. His sister, Marin, is domineering and cruel to her at first. Johaness
buys her a cabinet house as a wedding gift, which is expensive. It has tiny
rooms that are an exact replica of their house.
At first, Nella hates the cabinet house. She would prefer
his love rather than receive gifts from him. She does not know what to do. She
hires a miniaturist to furnish the house, and she becomes frightened by the
objects that are delivered. She becomes friends with Cornelia, the maid, and is
fascinated by Otto, the manservant who is a black man. There are no people of
color in Amsterdam at that time. People stop and stare at him in the street.
Nella doesn’t like how they stare.
This novel shocked Ms. Hen, then it continued to shock her.
She knew something creepy would happen, then creepier things kept happening. In
this way, it reminded her a lot of a novel she read recently, FROG MUSIC, by
Emma Donahue, which was also historical fiction, about San Francisco in the
1800s. Ms. Hen thinks the style in which THE MINIATURIST is written is admirable;
the writing is excellent, the pacing is well done, and it did not cease to
surprise her. She likes to be surprised by what she reads, because she prefers not knowing what is going to happen. The ending of the novel is not as exciting
as the rest, but it is like life, it continues on. A quality novel shouldn’t have
an ending; it should be realistic, a line which does not end. Ms. Hen doesn’t
like to spoil things, and she doesn’t think this is a spoiler.
Ms. Hen adored THE MINIATURIST. It is a perfect winter novel,
because it takes place in winter in Amsterdam, and the descriptions of the
frozen canals are lovely. She enjoyed being taken away to a different time by a
novel written in a way that would not have been written in the time it took
place. But that doesn’t mean situations similar to this would not occur. Bizarre things
have always taken place, in every point in history. Civilization can demented,
and the more advanced we become the stranger the world gets.
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