Chevalier, Tracy "The Glassmaker"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Glassmaker" - 2024

I have read quite a few novels by Tracy Chevalier and they were all highly interesting, always about different people in different areas at different times.

But this was special. From the descriptions, I first thought this was a little like the stories by Edward Rutherfurd who guides us through centuries by introducing several people from several families. Well, this was a little different. The story starts in 1494 Orsola Rossa, the protagonist, lives in Murano with her family of glassmakers. After 500 years, she is in her sixties and has lived through a plague, several wars, many changes in the lives of people, especially women.

While I was first a little dismayed by this way of telling the story, I really loved the people in Murano and Venice. Not all, but most of them. And the story of the family and how they got through all the upheavals, was also fantastic. 

You can tell, that Tracy Chevalier put a lot of time and effort into the research. I especially loved to learn about all the details of glassmaking. Well done.

I doubt I will ever get to see Venice but this is a good substitute.

From the back cover:

"Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives perfecting.

In secret, Orsola Rosso learns to craft glass. As a woman, she must flout convention to save her family from ruin. We follow her through hundreds of years of war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

Skipping like a stone across the centuries, The Glassmaker is a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as glass."

Chevalier, Tracy "The Last Runaway"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Last Runaway" - 2013

I have liked Tracy Chevalier, ever since my first novel written by her, "Girl with a Pearl Earring". I have since read more of her books but not enough, as it looks like.

Her story of an English Quaker girl who emigrates to the United States in the middle of the 19th century is absolutely fantastic. I think with today's background, we can all follow the feelings and thoughts of Honor Bright, we can sympathize with her actions. She was pretty brave to leave her home country to accompany her sister who was going to get married there. Even with the whole family, some would not have done that given the choice.

I think the author researched the background pretty well. None of us has lived at the time but I have read quite a few books about slavery, the Underground Railroad, Quakers, all important topics in this book. We get a long list of books that Tracy Chevalier used for background information which makes me believe that we can trust that it's true what she writes in her story. This is definitely a well written and believable book.

I liked Honor Bright but I liked Belle Mills and Mrs. Reed just as much, if not even more. I could even forgive some of the other characters for what they did. Today, this would be unacceptable but back then, this was how it was.

I also loved that they included a map. I mean, I know where Ohio is but I wouldn't have known where the towns mentioned are supposed to be.

At the end of the book, Tracy Chevalier mentions that it gives hope to us still, that in extreme circumstances we too would still do the right thing. Yes, let's hope that, at least for us, because we can see every day that many, many people don't do the right thing and applaud even those who don't.

At the end of the novel, the author gives some recommendations about further readings. I have read two of the four books mentioned and can only second that opinion.

On the Civil War:
Frazier, Charles "Cold Mountain" - 1997
Jiles, Paulette "Enemy Women" - 2002
Olmstead, Robert "Coal Black Horse" - 2007

On the Effect of Slavery:
Morrison, Toni "Beloved"

From the back cover:

"Honor Bright is a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset when she impulsively emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family. In this tough, unsentimental place, where whisky bottles sit alongside quilts, Honor befriends two spirited women who will teach her how to turn ideas into actions."

#ThrowbackThursday. Girl with a Pearl Earring

Chevalier, Tracy "Girl with a Pearl Earring" - 1999

16 year old Griet from Delft is a maid in the house of the famous Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. She doesn't just become a good help, she also is the model for his famous picture "Girl with a Pearl Earring".

The author describes the way a painting is done, the politics behind it, the life in the 1600s both in poor and rich houses.

This was the first of many books by Tracy Chevalier that I read.

Read more on my original post here.   

Chevalier, Tracy "The Lady and the Unicorn"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Lady and the Unicorn" - 2003

I've read quite a few of Tracy Chevalier's books. This is my fifth and it is all about a painting we hardly know anything about.

My fifth book by this remarkable author. Tracy Chevalier manages to weave history into her novels like nobody else. Even if her characters did not exist, it makes you feel like they did.

In this case, she tells the story of the Unicorn tapestries that were woven sometime in the 16th century . Little is known about them but you can almost imagine that the way Tracy Chevalier tells us is how it all actually happened.

This is the story of real tapestries called "The Lady and the Unicorn", six tapestries, each of them representing one of our five senses, sight (La Vue), sound (L'Ouïe), smell (L'Odorat), touch (Le Toucher), taste (Le Goût)  and a sixth called Mon Seul Désir (My only desire).

But even if you're not interested in history or art at all, this is a nice story about life in the Middle Ages. Or, if you are interested, you can go and see the tapestries in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (former Musée de Cluny) in Paris.

For me, the part that happened in Brussels was the most interesting. I used to live in Brussels and we still visit as often as possible. It is one of the loveliest towns around and you can still see all the guild houses and most of the other parts they are talking about nowadays.

From the back cover:

"It was the commission of a lifetime. Jean Le Viste, a fifteenth-century nobleman close to the King, hires an artist to design six tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. Nicolas des Innocents overcomes his surprise at being offered this commission when he catches sight of his patron's daughter, Claude. His pursuit of her pulls him into the web of fragile relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, lovers and servants.

It was a revolutionary design.

In Brussels, renowned weaver Georges de la Chapelle takes on the biggest challenge of his career. Never before has he attempted a work that puts so much at stake. Sucked into a world of temptation and seduction, he and his family are consumed by the project and by their dealings with the rogue painter from Paris. The results changed all their lives."

Chevalier, Tracy "Falling Angels"

Chevalier, Tracy "Falling Angels" - 2001

This is not the first Tracy Chevalier book and nor will it be the last. The author just manages to tell the most fascinating tales. I love her style. And her subjects. All of them.

Two ordinary families who have not a lot in common, other than a family plot on an Edwardian London cemetery. Or have they? The two little girls like each other instantly and become best friends, and everything else starts from there. Tracy Chevalier has the most invigorate talent of gripping your interest, if not from the first page, then certainly from the second. You want to know everything about the Waterhouses and the Colemans, you fear with them, you rejoice with them.

The book has a lot of subjects, friendship between the two girls, rivalry between and among the families, love and death, betrayal, engagement, politics. With every chapter, Tracy Chevalier gives another character the chance to tell us her or his point of view, that makes it so much more exciting. I like this way of storytelling.

The topic that fascinated me most, and probably most other women, was the history of the suffragettes and how much they had to endure to give us all a right that seemed natural for men. Without them, who knows what our world would look like today? But we also see the opinion of those who opposed the idea, even women who thought it might be better to leave voting to the men.

 It is great that the author gives us a glimpse into a society long forgotten, the reign of King Edward VII who had to take over a country created by his mother, Queen Victoria, who led his people into a new century, a transition into a new era, he had to cope with all sorts of new technology and hence new ideas in the minds of people.

Tracy Chevalier's strongest point, she tells us the story of everyday people in a changing world, in a difficult time. It is so much easier to understand any kind of history that way, what were the effects of big politics on the people. I love her books for that.

Tracy Chevalier has also a wonderful page about this book.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"A poignant tale of two families brought reluctantly together.

A powerful novel on the changing of a nation, the fight for women's suffrage and the questioning of steadfast beliefs.

January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria’s death: Two families visit neighbouring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions; the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. 

As the girls grow up and the new century finds its feet, as cars replace horses and electricity outshines gas lighting, the nation emerges from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. "

Find here the other books I read by this author.

Chevalier, Tracy "The Virgin Blue"

Chevalier, Tracy "The Virgin Blue" - 1997

I liked "Girl with a Pearl Earring" but this one is even better, I loved it. If you are interested in reading about people in former time, especially how women used to live, this is the book for you. I was reminded of this one when reading "Labyrinth" because both novels are situated in France (well, partly) and both novels occur over different centuries.

An American woman moves to France with her husband and starts having strange dreams about the colour blue. Well, blue is one of my favourite colours (the other one would be green). At the same time we learn about a woman from the 16th century. Both their lives have similarities … Read it, it's gripping.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"The compelling story of two women, born four centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them.

Ella Turner does her best to fit in to the small, close-knit community of Lisle-sur-Tarn. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high school French. But it is all in vain. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, which leads to her encounter with the town’s wolfish librarian.

Isabelle du Moulin, known as Le Rousse due to her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in the village – suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association with the Virgin Mary. Falling pregnant, she is forced to marry into the ruling family: the Tourniers. Tormentor becomes husband, and a shocking fate awaits her.

Plagued by the colour blue, Ella is haunted by parallels with the past, and by her recurring dream. Then one morning she wakes up to discover that her hair is turning inexplicably red…"

Find here the other books I read by this author.

Chevalier, Tracy "Remarkable Creatures"

Chevalier, Tracy "Remarkable Creatures" - 2009

I had originally suggested the book because I liked "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" and "The Virgin Blue" (apparently "The Lady and the Unicorn" is supposed to be even better). After reading it, I would have preferred it to be a non-fiction book. Most of our readers agreed. One of us googled the two women afterwards and found it a lot more interesting than the book. I couldn't agree more.

We did think it very compelling that she used body parts, we never thought about people in those terms, like someone "leading with his nose".

The book generated a good discussion on serious topics, though. We talked about the time period (Age of Enlightenment and then French Revolution), the chances women had back then, how science was regarded, what people thought when they found the first dinosaur fossils.

We did like a few things, the topic most of all, that the author raised issues without batting on them. We also liked the different words Mary Anning had for the fossils, like "verteberries".

However, we found the characters two-dimensional, didn't like the fact that we were told instead of shown, the romance was so cliché and overdone.

Oh, and one last thing: Why do they always have to change the titles when translating them? Granted, "Zwei bemerkenswerte Frauen" (Two remarkable women) in German isn't far off but they leave out the dinosaurs completely. What is wrong with "Bemerkenswerte Kreaturen"?? Some other languages are even worse, the Spanish title is "Las huellas de la vida" (The traces of life). And in the Netherlands, you can even buy the English book with a different English title: "Spare Bones".

All in all, we would have expected more of the book but liked being introduced to Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot.

We discussed this in our international book club in October 2011.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"A stunning novel of female friendship, forbidden love and evolution from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye…

From the moment she’s struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is different. Her discovery of strange fossilized creatures in the cliffs of Lyme Regis sets the world alight. But Mary must face powerful prejudice from a male scientific establishment, not to mention vicious gossip and the heartbreak of forbidden love.

Then – in prickly, clever Elizabeth Philpot, a fossil-obsessed middle-class spinster – she finds a champion, and a rival. Despite their differences in class and age, Mary and Elizabeth’s loyalty and passion for the truth must win out.

Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman’s gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship."

Find here the other books I read by this author.

Chevalier, Tracy "Girl with a Pearl Earring"

Chevalier, Tracy "Girl with a Pearl Earring" - 1999

One of our first book club reads in the Netherlands. We chose this because of the "Dutch background", i.e. a painting of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. The main character is 16 year old Griet from Delft, a maid in the house of the famous painter. She doesn't just become a good help, she also is the model for his famous picture "Girl with a Pearl Earring". Even though this is fiction and it is generally assumed that the girl in this painting is one of Vermeer's own daughters, the story still is very interesting. The author describes the way a painting is done, the politics behind it, the life in the 1600s both in poor and rich houses.

As expatriates in the Netherlands, this novel also brought us closer to one of this country's great geniuses. You can tell the author loves art and history. This is also one of the few books turned into a film where I didn't entirely dislike the movie, even though alterations were made.

I also read Tracy Chevalier's "The Virgin Blue" and absolutely loved it. "Falling Angels" was also wonderful.

We discussed this in our book club in November 2001. We also discussed "Remarkable Creatures" by the same author in October 2010.

From the back cover:

"A brilliant historical novel on the corruption of innocence, using the famous painting by Vermeer as an inspiration.

Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer’s household. Tracy Chevalier shows us through Griet’s eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Find the other books I read by this author here.