Helpful Score: 9
Historical fiction, actually a book of short stories that follow a painting from modern times back to the painter and the subject of the painting. It's many different stories and varied lives woven into one tale. I like stories like this that follow an object through history, and Vreeland did this one very well, able to narrate a story from the perspective of a wide variety of characters, from a modern-day math professor in the USA to a French Lady in the time of Louis XIV, to a Dutch farm wife. I enjoyed it very much and will be looking for more from this author
Helpful Score: 5
This is not a long read, and the reverse chronology vignettes about the fictitious painting by Vermeer, "Girl in Hyacinth Blue" were very engrossing and at times surprising. I loved Vreeland's lush descriptions of Netherlands landscapes and scenery - you almost felt as if you were right there! This book wasn't just narratives of nature's beauty -- Vreeland also described poverty and the finality of life very well, too. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and some of the imagery Vreeland created will stay with me.
Helpful Score: 3
I just finished this book last night and I am not quite sure how I feel about it. The story was definately interesting how the painting touched so many peoples lives in such different ways. The book was somewhat depressing in a way though. There was a somber overcast in each of the short stories that seemed like a big dark cloud sitting over me as I read.
Helpful Score: 2
Amazing prose. The author tells the story in vignettes, but they all flow together as one novel, one story. The richness of the words is fathomless. The characterization is excellently conveyed by lack of description, an astonishing success there. This book is for any serious reader of excellent literature.
Helpful Score: 2
We follow a painting by Vermeer as it travels from person to person over the years. It is a great story about art and human life.
Helpful Score: 1
Oh, the travels this girl in blue takes you through. Thouroughly enjoyable.
Helpful Score: 1
A delightful story, well written
Helpful Score: 1
This was a lovely set of stories revolving around a painting. It begins in modern day with a story telling how the present owner's father obtained the painting. Then each successive story takes the painting back another owner. Four of the stories were published separately. Then when Susan Vreeland combined them into this book she added in the linking stories. I enjoyed the writing style, the details of everyday life, and the different perspective that the paint drew from each character.
Helpful Score: 1
I loved this book. It keeps you wanting to know what's next as you continually peer through the previous window in time. I found myself wanting each part of the story expand into it's own book. I could have kept reading and reading had the author continued on. This book is full of rich details making you want to learn more about every painting you've ever wondered about.
This book, told in reverse chronological order, tell the stories of the various owners of a Vermee painting
Sweet and sad story of a Dutch girl who worked in the Vermeers household and how his influences affected her life.
My book club read this and it was very enjoyable. Quick to read.
A good book but really short stories about the owners of the painting. This is the third book of short stories I have read in a row...and I do not enjoy short stories. However of the three this is
the only one I have finished. It does keep your interest
the only one I have finished. It does keep your interest
Very interesting; a must-read.
A beautiful read. Follows the owners of a (fictional) Vermeer painting back to the artist. Each owners' story is told in a different voice. This is one book that I'll keep on my bookshelf and read again.
I loved this book. It was quick read but it left me reflective for days afterwards. Vreeland has a real gift for bringing works of great art to life for the reader, and lending them a human quality and personal history. Really one of the best books I've read in a long time.
Very good. This is the 2nd Vreeland novel I have read and I can't wait to read another.
If you are at all interested in the world of Vermeer paintings, this is a wonder ful read.
This was a quick enjoyable read. Told in vignettes, the story traces the life and travels of a painting...a lost Vermeer. This story slightly reminded me of "Girl With a Pearl Earring", by Tracey Chevalier, but it is not really the exact same story. This is a nice book to read on a weekend. I found my copy left behind in the home we have recently moved in. Most of the books that I found that the previous owner of my home had left for us were not the quality or type of literature that I usually choose to read, but this was a nice find! If you like art or art history, I think you will enjoy this book.
This book goes back and forth in time and discusses Vermeer's famous painting of the same name. I liked it alot.
An excellent book set in the time of Vermeer from the viewpoint of a modern art professor. The book begins with a discussion between the professor and a student about the painting in his home. It goes on to explain how the painting came into being. Fascinating. . .
Very well written. Hard to put down. Traces the history of a painting and describes the lives of all those who might have been touched by it. Turn off the phone and enjoy a really unique story.
Fantastic read! You will not regret it!
Loved the movement of this painting and the stories behind those who came in contact with it.
I think I will reread this book at some point because I found myself distracted by outside influences at times and feel I've missed some of the more subtle points. Good read - traces a painting's history/owners from most current to origin - and the impact this piece of artwork had on those individuals.
Loved this book! Great as a weekend read.
Very vibrant writing, that helped with the visualization of the book. There's also a movie based on this book, although there were a few controversial things left out.
Very interesting writing style.
This book is about a secret hidden painting. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces.
The plot unfolds backwards through time, leaving you guessing. My Book Club loved this book!
I enjoyed this book.
This book tells the story of a 'stolen' Vermeer painting by each of it's 'owners' in reverse chronological time. I really liked this book - especially to see how the painting changed hands throughout the centuries. The modern owner's story lead me to think about just how many other works by Masters might be 'owned' and hidden away in private houses.
My bookclub read this book along with "A Girl with a Pearl Earring". Makes a good discussion. Read both.
Beautifully written. A series of interlocking short stories that trace the history of a (fictional) painting masterpiece back through the centuries, and the emotions and actions it evoked in the people through whose hands it passed.
I liked this story and the way it moved me as reader back to the original painting's story.
haunting, stunning, exquisite moments - luminous tale.
I liked the format of this book a lot. It's a series of vignettes all revolving around the owners of the same painting. Some stories deal with how the owner got the painting, some show how it was lost, and some show both. It starts in present time, then slowly works it way backwards and shows quick glimpses of very different lives. Even though each story is short, you get a sense of the needs and flaws in the characters and Vreeland manages to pack a lot of information into a few short pages. I was impressed with the format and use of time-line and am looking forward to reading more of her work.
Quick interesting read. A good one!
Fabulous read!
Great characters and a gripping adventure back in time. Not just a chick book--my husband enjoyed it as well.
Great book!
Interesting vignettes. Some were better than others. Beautiful writing about the scenery.
I loved this book. Very interesting concept of tracing an object through history and meeting all the people whose lives' it touched.
Fascinating story of the life of Vermeer painting. Makes one think and imagine the stories all the old things around us could tell if they could speak. Well researched and a delight to read.
An excellent read especially if you are interested in art. How the lives of those who own the painting are changed by it and how each of us interpret beauty.
Another fascinating, fictional take on art from Susan Vreeland.
This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeerbut why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Vreeland's characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable.
"Intelligent, searching, and unusual... . Like the painting it describes so well, [the novel] has a way of lingering in the reader's mind." The New York Times Book Review
"A little gem of a novel ... [a] beautifully written exploration of the power of art." Parade
"Stunning ... Haunting" San Francisco Chronicle
Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle
Nominated for the Book Sense Book of the Year
"Intelligent, searching, and unusual... . Like the painting it describes so well, [the novel] has a way of lingering in the reader's mind." The New York Times Book Review
"A little gem of a novel ... [a] beautifully written exploration of the power of art." Parade
"Stunning ... Haunting" San Francisco Chronicle
Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle
Nominated for the Book Sense Book of the Year
Intriguing story told in a unique way. A series of stories, each a 'chapter' which tells the journey of a mysterious painting. I couldn't put it down.
Facinating stories relating to art, especially "Vermeer".
Great book...lots of interesting Dutch stuff and wonderful concept to explore.
A really beautiful book - well written and researched - I'm going to search out more of Vreeland's work to read! I have recommended this book to friends who are loving it too.
I really enjoyed this book. It's a set of short stories that starts at present day and traces the the owners of this painting back to its source. It was easy to read, but not superficial. A quick read, and very enjoyable.
Interesting read, has been made into a Hallmark Movie (although I haven't seen it)
This novel traces the ownership of a fictional Vermeer painting from present day back to its origins. The author does a good job of showing how the artwork brings meaning to each person who possesses it.
Very good descriptions. Interesting historical in sites. Compelling storries
This is a delightful story telling the journey of a painting presumably painted by the Dutch master Vermeer. It tells it's journey in reverse starting with it's present day owner who is a Math professor in Philadelphia and working it's way back to it's origins in The Netherlands where the daughter of the painter must relinquish her hold on it when her circumstances are dire.
We learn the stories of each person or family who has acquired the painting, their attachment to it and eventually how or why they part with it. The painting has a special hold over each of it's owners.
In between hearing about the painting and it's many owners one is also made aware of the current events of the time.
This is my second reading of this book and I enjoyed it as much as the first time. Definitely worth reading. (less)
We learn the stories of each person or family who has acquired the painting, their attachment to it and eventually how or why they part with it. The painting has a special hold over each of it's owners.
In between hearing about the painting and it's many owners one is also made aware of the current events of the time.
This is my second reading of this book and I enjoyed it as much as the first time. Definitely worth reading. (less)
This book is similar in that it follows a painting from owner to owner through history. Very enjoyable
Same story as \"Girl with a Pearl Earring.\"
A professor invites a colleague from the art department to his home to see a painting he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears that it is a Vermeer- why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in human lives. Vreeland's characters remind us, through their love of the mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts, and what in our lives is unforgettable.
Amazon.com
There are only 35 known Vermeers extant in the world today. In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland posits the existence of a 36th. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of his colleagues. He has, he claims, an authentic Vermeer painting, "a most extraordinary painting in which a young girl wearing a short blue smock over a rust-colored skirt sat in profile at a table by an open window." His colleague, an art teacher, is skeptical and though the technique and subject matter are persuasively Vermeer-like, Engelbrecht can offer no hard evidence--no appraisal, no papers--to support his claim. He says only that his father, "who always had a quick eye for fine art, picked it up, let us say, at an advantageous moment." Eventually it is revealed that Engelbrecht's father was a Nazi in charge of rounding up Dutch Jews for deportation and that the picture was looted from one doomed family's home:
That's when I saw that painting, behind his head. All blues and yellows and reddish brown, as translucent as lacquer. It had to be a Dutch master. Just then a private found a little kid covered with tablecloths behind some dishes in a sideboard cabinet. We'd almost missed him.
By the end of "Love Enough," this first of eight interrelated stories tracing the history of "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," the painting's fate at the hands of guilt-riddled Engelbrecht fils is in question. Unfortunately, there is no doubt about the probable destiny of the previous owners, the Vredenburg family of Rotterdam, who take center stage in the powerful "A Night Different From All Other Nights." Vreeland handles this tale with subtlety and restraint, setting it at Passover, the year before the looting, and choosing to focus on the adolescent Hannah Vredenburg's difficult passage into adulthood in the face of an uncertain future. In the next story, "Adagia," she moves even further into the past to sketch "how love builds itself unconsciously ... out of the momentous ordinary" in a tender portrait of a longtime marriage. Back and back Vreeland goes, back through other owners, other histories, to the very inception of the painting in the homely, everyday objects of the Vermeer household--a daughter's glass of milk, a son's shirt in need of buttons, a wife's beloved sewing basket--"the unacknowledged acts of women to hallow home." Girl in Hyacinth Blue ends with the painting's subject herself, Vermeer's daughter Magdalena, who first sends the portrait out into the world as payment for a family debt, then sees it again, years later at an auction.
She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.
In this final passage, Susan Vreeland might be describing her own masterpiece as well as Vermeer's. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
As Keats describes the scenes and lives frozen in a moment of time on his Grecian urn, so Vreeland layers moments in the lives of eight people profoundly moved and changed by a Vermeer painting a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Vreeland opens with a man who suffers through his adoration of the painting because he inherited it from his Nazi father, who stole it from a deported Jewish family. She traces the work's provenance through the centuries: the farmer's wife, the Bohemian student, the loving husband with a secret and, finally, the Girl herself Vermeer's eldest daughter, who felt her "self" obliterated by the self immortalized in paint, but accepted that this was the nature of art. Descriptions of the painting by people in different countries in various historical periods are particularly beautiful. Each section is read by a different narrator, some better than others. Several add dimension to the story and writing, while others are so intent on portraying the book's ethereal qualities they make the listener conscious of the reader instead of the language. Still, this is a delightful production.
There are only 35 known Vermeers extant in the world today. In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland posits the existence of a 36th. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of his colleagues. He has, he claims, an authentic Vermeer painting, "a most extraordinary painting in which a young girl wearing a short blue smock over a rust-colored skirt sat in profile at a table by an open window." His colleague, an art teacher, is skeptical and though the technique and subject matter are persuasively Vermeer-like, Engelbrecht can offer no hard evidence--no appraisal, no papers--to support his claim. He says only that his father, "who always had a quick eye for fine art, picked it up, let us say, at an advantageous moment." Eventually it is revealed that Engelbrecht's father was a Nazi in charge of rounding up Dutch Jews for deportation and that the picture was looted from one doomed family's home:
That's when I saw that painting, behind his head. All blues and yellows and reddish brown, as translucent as lacquer. It had to be a Dutch master. Just then a private found a little kid covered with tablecloths behind some dishes in a sideboard cabinet. We'd almost missed him.
By the end of "Love Enough," this first of eight interrelated stories tracing the history of "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," the painting's fate at the hands of guilt-riddled Engelbrecht fils is in question. Unfortunately, there is no doubt about the probable destiny of the previous owners, the Vredenburg family of Rotterdam, who take center stage in the powerful "A Night Different From All Other Nights." Vreeland handles this tale with subtlety and restraint, setting it at Passover, the year before the looting, and choosing to focus on the adolescent Hannah Vredenburg's difficult passage into adulthood in the face of an uncertain future. In the next story, "Adagia," she moves even further into the past to sketch "how love builds itself unconsciously ... out of the momentous ordinary" in a tender portrait of a longtime marriage. Back and back Vreeland goes, back through other owners, other histories, to the very inception of the painting in the homely, everyday objects of the Vermeer household--a daughter's glass of milk, a son's shirt in need of buttons, a wife's beloved sewing basket--"the unacknowledged acts of women to hallow home." Girl in Hyacinth Blue ends with the painting's subject herself, Vermeer's daughter Magdalena, who first sends the portrait out into the world as payment for a family debt, then sees it again, years later at an auction.
She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.
In this final passage, Susan Vreeland might be describing her own masterpiece as well as Vermeer's. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
As Keats describes the scenes and lives frozen in a moment of time on his Grecian urn, so Vreeland layers moments in the lives of eight people profoundly moved and changed by a Vermeer painting a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Vreeland opens with a man who suffers through his adoration of the painting because he inherited it from his Nazi father, who stole it from a deported Jewish family. She traces the work's provenance through the centuries: the farmer's wife, the Bohemian student, the loving husband with a secret and, finally, the Girl herself Vermeer's eldest daughter, who felt her "self" obliterated by the self immortalized in paint, but accepted that this was the nature of art. Descriptions of the painting by people in different countries in various historical periods are particularly beautiful. Each section is read by a different narrator, some better than others. Several add dimension to the story and writing, while others are so intent on portraying the book's ethereal qualities they make the listener conscious of the reader instead of the language. Still, this is a delightful production.
