Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of
forbidden love. Even nature is a threat, throwing bitter cold, storms, and landslips at her. Luckily Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who is also
fossil-obsessed. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce
loyalty and barely suppressed envy. Despite their differences in age and
background, Mary and Elizabeth discover that, in struggling for recognition,
friendship is their strongest weapon. Remarkable Creatures is Tracy Chevalier's
stunning new 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.

I had no idea who Mary Anning was, in fact when A. told me we had been offered an ARC my first thought was that it might be nice to read a book set in Lyme Regis after reading about it in my favourite Jane Austen novel, Persuasion. Then I went to Wikipedia to find a bit more on Anning.

There are two main characters in the story though. Not just Mary Anning but also Elizabeth Philpot, an older woman of a higher class who befriends Mary due to their common interest in searching the beach for curies. The story is told by both of them in turns and if Mary's story is mainly about the fossils, Elizabeth also mentions her sisters, their lack of marriage prospects and her feelings regarding being a spinster. One of the things the book addresses is how little power women had and how little they were valued and considered in the scientific world and in society in general. Elizabeth feels very protective towards Mary and after having been friends for long the two have a falling out when Mary falls in love for someone she can never marry and Elizabeth tries to advise her not to feel too much and not to endanger her livelihood. But everything is resolved when Elizabeth goes to London to try to see Mary's find given the proper recognition so its once again the fossils that bring them together...

I do think Chevalier managed to write well rounded characters, however they felt a bit cold and unsympatetic to me and I failed to understand the fascination they had with the fossils. I do like her writing style that I find very evocative of the period and very easy to read but what I enjoyed the most was the dialogues regarding God's creatures and how Mary's strange find could be included in the biblical idea of creation, it was a pity that that ended up not so developed as I hoped for.

Grade: 3.5/5

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

One of the best-loved paintings in the world is a mystery. Who is the model and why has she been painted? What is she thinking as she stares out at us? Are her wide eyes and enigmatic half-smile innocent or seductive? And why is she wearing a pearl earring?
Girl With a Pearl Earring tells the story of Griet, a 16-year-old Dutch girl who becomes a maid in the house of the painter Johannes Vermeer. Her calm and perceptive manner not only helps her in her household duties, but also attracts the painter's attention. Though different in upbringing, education and social standing, they have a similar way of looking at things. Vermeer slowly draws her into the world of his paintings - the still, luminous images of solitary women in domestic settings.

In contrast to her work in her master's studio, Griet must carve a place for herself in a chaotic Catholic household run by Vermeer's volatile wife Catharina, his shrewd mother-in-law Maria Thins, and their fiercely loyal maid Tanneke. Six children (and counting) fill out the household, dominated by six-year-old Cornelia, a mischievous girl who sees more than she should.

On the verge of womanhood, Griet also contends with the growing attentions both from a local butcher and from Vermeer's patron, the wealthy van Ruijven. And she has to find her way through this new and strange life outside the loving Protestant family she grew up in, now fragmented by accident and death.

As Griet becomes part of her master's work, their growing intimacy spreads disruption and jealousy within the ordered household and even - as the scandal seeps out - ripples in the world beyond.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is one of those books that have been so talked about in a positive way that when the opportunity arised to read it I couldn't help myself.

I do feel that Chevalier is very good at conveying the right atmosphere for her novels. This is the second one I read and in both of them there's an artistic atmosphere, if you can call it that, and a great concern with describing not only the works of art involved but also the materials and techniques the characters use.

In this story about one of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous paintings, Griet a sixteen year girl is led by the impoverishment of her family to seek employment with Vermeer's family. Griet is an uncommonly sensitive girl who orders vegetables according to size and colour. That attracts Vermeer’s attention and soon she becomes not only the house maid but is assistant in manufacturing the colours he uses. In a society with rigid rules separating religious beliefs and society divisions between people, this transformation of Griet's duties is well hidden from Vermeer's wife, requested by the painter and abetted by his mother in law. Vermeer's demands on Griet won’t stop there as he decides to make her a model for one of his paintings thus making her position in the house even more secretive and fragile.

The atmosphere is indeed everything in this novel where no one comes across as very sympathetic, Vermeer lost in his genius, Griet confused and unsettled by her feelings and the other members of the household more devoted to their own interests. As the action draws to a close it seems obvious that Griet's time with Vermeer would be finished as soon as is painting was. His interest in her as a subject ends when he reaches perfection even if that causes her to lose her job and almost her respectability.

I must confess that although I can see what makes so many love this book that sentiment eluded me somehow. I can see its merits, I'm glad I read it but that's it. Maybe I'm just not a very visual sort of person because I did love the movie where I could actually see the colours and understand them.

Grade: 4/5

The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Two families, two cities, one rogue go-between, and a set of gorgeous tapestries, all in a late medieval setting.

Nicolas des Innocents, a handsome, lascivious artist, is summoned to the Paris home of Jean Le Viste, a nobleman who wants Nicolas to design a series of battle tapestries for his house. Jean’s wife, Geneviève, persuades Nicolas to talk her husband into a softer subject: the taming of a unicorn by a noblewoman. Nicolas shapes the tapestries with his own vision, dedicating five of the six to the senses and using the images of Geneviève and her daughter, Claude, with whom Nicolas is smitten, for two of the ladies in the tapestries.

Nicolas takes the finished designs to Brussels, where master weaver Georges de la Chapelle will make them. At first Nicolas is scornful of Georges, but gradually comes to respect him and his wife Christine, and to take an interest in his daughter Aliénor. Nicolas models two more of the ladies in the tapestries after Christine and Aliénor, but his heart lies with the unattainable Claude.

Several story strands are woven together through the design and making of these complex, seductive tapestries.

Chevalier, famous for her novel about Vermeer, focuses her attention here on the Flemish tapestries known as The Lady and The Unicorn. She introduces to the family who ordered them made and to the fictional characters of the cartoonist who made the drawings and the family of weavers who weaved them.

I really enjoyed knowing that she included real people in the novel. I love to go check who’s real and who’s not when I finish a book. And I also enjoyed the fact that she made us understand why people wanted tapestries, how long and how detailed was the work of weaving them and how important was the design. How people’s lives were affected by that tapestry and how each sees in the Tapestry something different. As each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view we are aware of what each of them thinks regarding the tapestry and its meaning.

The characters involved in the story come from different background and it’s the cartoonist, Nicolas des Innocents, who is the link between them all. He wasn’t a particularly likeable character with his unicorn story and his desire to bed most of the women he comes across. There’s an obvious connection between his story and the Unicorn in the tapestry but I must confess that my dislike of him coloured, in part, my appreciation of the story.

The Tapestry represents the 5 senses and the sixth is called A Mon Seul Desir and it is interesting in the end to see how Nicolas and Genevieve de Nanterre see different things in it. Isn’t that in fact the nature of art? To be a different experience for everyone?

Chevalier’s novel has many layers and it is interesting to appreciate also how she portrays the status of women in society, the relationship between the several women in each house, the professional relationships that the weavers maintain and value and a view of society as a whole.

Grade: 4/5