Bingo Board Review: Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

I picked this book as my “historical fiction book” for the Bingo Board Reading Challenge, because I’ve heard so many good things about it. 

It is set in 17th century Delft in the Netherlands and is told from the perspective of a young girl named Griet, who goes to work as a maid in the house of Vermeer, the famous painter. 

We learn early on that her father has had an accident at his work and can’t work any longer, so now the two children must support the family. The son is an apprentice tile maker and that is all well and good, but Griet must work as a maid and the parents are so ashamed of what this family has come to, and say things like “We lost you when you became a maid” etc. If it’s SO shameful to be a maid why are you letting her? And if it is so necessary for her to work as a maid to support YOU why are you being so bitchy about it? 

Anyway, she goes to the house and gets stuck into work. And here she meets a bunch of people and the book is really about her relationships with all of these. There is the man of the house, Vermeer, whom she develops a giant crush on out of nowhere, the lady of the house, Vermeer’s wife, who seems to be moody and jealous, the grandmother, the children and another maid all of whom Griet has complicated relationships with. 

Griet starts out as a simple laundry girl, doing all the grunt work around the house, but somehow she ends up assisting Vermeer grinding and mixing colors etc. and for some reason I never really understood, this was to be kept a secret and all throughout the novel there was this tension, because Griet had to keep basically everything secret from everyone. But why? No one specifically said she had to do so, it seems it was just understood. And when she gets in trouble because of it, Vermeer just lets her flounder instead of saying “Hey, I asked her to, so let up!” I just found that entire premise so weird. It seemed everything had to kept secret from the wife, but no one ever really said why, so I had a hard time understanding everyone’s motives. 

Apart from that weird tension throughout the novel that was never really justified, I thought it was well written. Except for one bit, where Griet asks Vermeer to do or say something and he says “All right”…All right?? It was so completely out of tone with the entire book that had otherwise been so carefully crafted to really feel like a genuine account from the 17th century. Other than that tiny jarring bit, it was really well done and I would like to read more of Chevalier’s work. 

I gave this book 3,5 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.