The Miniaturist

This is such a unique story line that I couldn't help but love it. The suffocating feeling is (although it sounds strange) a wonderful thing.

I learned a lot about seventeenth-century Amsterdam when researching The Map Colorist, and I loved how Jessie Burton really brings the time and place to life.

There is the young Nella, caught in a marriage she doesn’t understand, and which will ultimately have dire consequences. There is also her sister-in-law, whom we come to really know only at the very end. Overlapping it all is the mysterious miniaturist, who presents Nella with new figures for the elaborate doll house that her husband gave her. The miniatures seem to predict the future!

The setting of 17th century Amsterdam was one I was unfamiliar with, so it was a delight to be taken into the intimate domestic life of Petronella Oortman and the intrigue of her dollhouse, the secret lives of her servants, and the complex social hierarchy of this time and place. Jessie Burton’s writing is both rich in detail and emotive, so I felt privy to both the psychological complexity of the characters and the life they spend traversing the canals and streets of the city.