The Miniaturist Audio CD – Unabridged, 26 Aug. 2014

This is the story of Nella who is married off to a rich man in Amsterdam, she rarely sees her husband in the beginning, he obviously has secrets which we find out fairly quickly, and then there is Marin her sister in law, she is very unfriendly and also has her own secrets to hide. Her husband buys her a dolls house which is a replica of her own house and soon she starts receiving items for it from a miniaturist whose identity is unknown. I enjoyed aspects of this book, however I took ages to get into the story, it's very slow, and also a very sad, dark read. I was also very disappointed with the ending as the main question of the book was left unanswered i thought. It could have done with 1 more chapter to the everything together.

This little motto is one of many elliptical messages sent out by The Miniaturist, whose sylph-like presence in the novel traces the growing pains of Nella Brandt during the Dutch Golden Age. The trope of the doll's cabinet is cleverly conceived as it allows Burton to let the feminist coming-of-age theme to mould itself. The narrative works as delicately as a prism, its tortoiseshell and pewter shades refracting 'the more irregular, intimate jumps of an interior life' as the miniaturist authors Nella's story, opening up into little compartments whose inhabitants seem to shape-shift according to the joys and tragedies that beset them in real life. Living among the sumptuous fabrics of Johannes' home, her struggle is to turn them into tapestries of hope, with no one to weave them, she says, but ourselves. Male homosexuality, miscegenation and the struggle for female independence become obstacles in a city where the tradition of the 'Gebuurte', a sort of 17th-century Dutch neighbourhood watch scheme, pries into the private lives of individuals who, like Johannes, try to reach out 'for something his own tongue can never achieve'.Burton is very good at bringing into the centre ground the importance of sugar. People's prosperity depends on it, yet it symbolises the sickly indulgence of a city saturated in its own opulence against a leering backdrop of Protestant austerity. Amsterdam becomes a terrible victim of its own commercial success. Riddled with hypocrisy, the city drinks from its own poisoned chalice with guilds, merchants and magistrates all vying for position as Nella sets about discovering her true woman's self beyond the cabinet that her husband brings her as compensation for an unconsummated marriage. The Miniaturist, in turning her into one of the puppets, in the end allows her to see into the compartments of her own life, so that she becomes the most powerful magistrate of them all in command of the thing that really matters, her own life as a woman. This is a brilliant debut novel, but the men float too freely, never properly pinned down to those vital dynamic encounters with the crises of their own lives, eluding and escaping instead of engaging with them. Two mottos, the one stating that 'Everything Man Sees He Takes For A Toy. Thus He Is Forever A Boy' and the other that 'Every Woman Is The Architect Of Her Own Fortune' together tend to nullify each other and prevent the evolution of the male characters. Fight to emerge, but relish the ending. It's beautifully done.

I enjoyed this book right up to the last couple of chapters. There seemed to be an intriguing mystery as to who the "Miniaturist" was, and how he/she was able to predict events in the heroine, Nella's life within the secretive Amsterdam household. The story is well written, and interesting up to a point, but I felt let down at the end, because the Miniaturist's identity was never revealed, neither was his/hers apparent ability to predict future events. It turned out to be a damp squib, in my opinon. Otherwise an interesting read.

This must be the saddest book that I have read for a very long time. The writing is superb. The prose is exquisite and the research adds great authenticity to the characters and to the scenes, which are set in seventeenth century Amsterdam. The atmosphere is palpable and the action is intense.I became immersed in the characters and quite attached to some of them.The cruelty and brutality of the protestant religious leaders of the Dutch Republic is appalling. They flex their man-made power in the name of God and they wallow in the satisfaction that the get from their unchallengeable authority. Even the wealth of the merchants is trumped by the pastors.I loved the mystery that surrounded the wonderful craftmanship of the miniaturist who supplies tiny replicas of people and objects which predict actual events. She is seldom seen and is a prophet of reality. That is rather scary at times.The story is gripping. This book kept me awake until well after one in the morning on several occasions.For me, because of the background, the scene-setting, the religious undertones, the character-building and the starkness of society, The Miniaturist struck echoes of Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. I mean that as a huge complement to the writing of Jessie Burton.For a while, I wavered between awarding four stars or five stars because I became irritated by the number of missing inverted commas and apostrophes. However, it would have been very unfair to award less than five stars to a book that gripped me from beginning to end and stirred my emotions so much that I wept many tears for the tragedy.You must read this book.

Set in 17th century Amsterdam, Nella aged just 18 arrives in the city to start her new life with the handsome husband she has barely met. She is excited and curious to escape her poor and predictable country upbringing to live in the comfort of a successful merchant's home and to meet his household. Her husband barely acknowledges her however and it seems as if there are secrets and a history that she us not to be privy to. Her husband does buy her a sumptious replica of the house she now lives in with the instructions that she is to fill it with miniture furniture as she sees fit. She finds a miniaturist who soon sends eerily accurate tiny copies of items in the house, and even of the people who live in it. It is as if he is watching Nella and even predicting the future...how can this be?This book draws you in from the first page. Nothing and no one is as they seem on first appearance and every character has secrets and mysteries to share. This might be set in the 1600s but the themes are no different to today, greed, love, lust and hypocrlsy to name a few.