Title: The Miniaturist Author: Jessie Burton
Published: August 26, 2014
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 400
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office—leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.
But Nella's world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist—an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .
Johannes' gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand—and fear—the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation . . . or the architect of their destruction?
Jessie Burton’s debut novel is different from any sort of historical fiction I’ve read before. The Miniaturist really breaks molds and does its own thing, and I liked a lot of aspects about it. At the same time, this wasn’t the book I expected to read, or really wanted to read. Though there’s an overlaying message of hope and female strength, I found this book to be bleak in a way I doubt the author intended, and the story to be dull rather than captivating. Overall, it was a good book, but not a great one.
The novel’s protagonist, Nella, is an 18-year-old country girl who marries an older merchant from Amsterdam, and then has to adjust to her strange new home. Based on the jacket copy and the few reviews I’d read, I’d formed an idea of what kind of book The Miniaturist was going to be. I was wrong. The themes examined in the text are much darker and more complex than I’d expected, which isn’t at all a bad thing, it’s just that it makes the story less feel-good and more like some serious reading.
The big question that this book brings about, though, is the titular miniaturist, who is an abstract, phantom-like presence in Nella’s life. I really think that if Burton had spent more time developing this character, and had given her role a proper and defined arc, the book would have been more successful. As it is, I’m still not entirely sure why we’ve given The Miniaturist the title it has, since if you took the dollhouse and the miniatures out, the story would be exactly the same. It felt almost like the author needed a gimmicky set-up to draw attention to her story, since the miniaturist side-plot somewhat distracts from the actual plot. it seems to me that if you’re going to title your book after a character, that character should be relevant to the plot.
I also wasn’t completely sold on the characters, nor did I really connect with them or invest with them. And I think that probably would have been important, all things considered, since many parts of this book are pretty emotionally appealing. Nothing about Nella or her new family stood out to me, really touched me. It wasn’t that these characters weren’t well three-dimensional, it was simply that Burton didn’t make me care.
At the same time, I can’t fault Jessie Burton for her historical detail or prose—both are very good, and really help develop the atmosphere and setting of The Miniaturist, which is Amsterdam in 1686. There was obviously a lot of attention to detail that went into this, and I appreciated the new places and situations I was introduced to through the text. I’d certainly be willing to look up more of the author’s books, should she continue to write historical fiction.
In conclusion, this book was almost excellent. Burton’s story is compelling, but at times it seemed that she didn’t know what her primary focus was. Because of this, The Miniaturist can at times seem to lack direction, and though it was never dull, I would have wished for more from the novel. This is unique historical fiction that doesn’t quite manage to make everything work together.
