In Amsterdam, late in the year 1686, Nella Oortman arrives from her rural home to take up residence with her new husband. The unceremonious wedding, a month since, paired the eighteen-year-old girl with merchant Johannes Brandt, twenty years or so her senior, and now she has come to commence her wifely duties.
Johannes is out on business, so she is received, rather than welcomed, by his unmarried sister Marin, the manservant Otto, and the housemaid Cornelia. Nella takes refuge in her room. She waits nervously for her husband’s return but gets no more than a cursory acknowledgement. She waits at night for his attentions but gets none.
With Marin keeping house and Johannes distant, Nella is in limbo. All she gets from her husband is a cupboard-sized replica of her new home. Is it a toy for his child-bride or compensation for not allowing her to manage the real house? Whatever, it is beautifully made, and Nella contacts a miniaturist to enquire about furniture. Almost immediately exquisitely carved miniatures begin to arrive – items of furniture and doll-like figures that accurately and eerily reflect life in the real house.
As Nella settles in and begins to poke around her new home, she suspects that the household is not as stable or prosperous as it seems. Or that the stability and prosperity is fragile, teetering on some brink, held together by shared secrets and shared lies. Secrets and lies that she does not know, but the miniaturist seems to.
The writing is atmospheric and engrossing. Seventeenth century Amsterdam is revealed in all its period detail, its citizens treading a fine line between the twin drivers of puritanical god-fearing and capitalist profit-making.
As the narrative
unfolds, over just a few months, Nella finds herself sucked from the household’s
periphery to the centre of events. Events that lead to more than one climax. It
makes for a dramatic and compulsive read.
No comments:
Post a Comment