Girl with a Pearl Earring

A brilliant historical novel on the corruption of innocence, using the famous painting by Vermeer as an inspiration. Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet's eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high.


Genre: Historical

"Griet goes to work as a servant for the painter Vermeer and through gradual stages of intimacy becomes his model. This is a beautifully observed novel - a painting in words, deep with tension and subtle shadows and a surface of wonderful colour." - Elizabeth Chadwick