The Miniaturist

Next on my holiday reading list was "The Miniaturist", Jessie Burton's debut novel. This was a very unique and intriguing novel, and reading it straight after "Sister Noon" highlighted just how good it was. Like Fowler's novel, this one focuses on a vulnerable female protagonist trying to find her way in the world, and it uses the entirely alien to me yet intriguing setting of 17th Century Amsterdam. Unlike "Sister Noon", this is actually very effective, and plot developments, twists and turns throughout the novel give the it a sense of unpredictability and can deliver genuine shocks and drama.

The premise is this. 18 year old Nella Oortman is recently married to 37 year old Johannes Brandt, but the household seems very strange and mysterious. A wedding gift, a miniature version of the house she is now living in, is furnished by a mysterious miniaturist, who uses their models to slowly reveal secrets about the house and the lives of the people in it. It initially feels like there will be a massive twist at the end, yet this is not the case. Instead, there are shocks and surprises woven throughout the narrative, leaving the ending for real, harsh consequences of what's been revealed. This, unlike some novels, is not neatly tied up by the end, yet the ending feels very fitting indeed, as Nella's development as a character is shown to have been the main focus of the novel.

 

Another pleasant surprise was the subject matter the book deals with. Without giving anything away, I will say that it ventures to surprising topics given its setting and time period. This means that occasionally some dialogue seems out of place or unrealistic, but on the whole this is not the case. Burton's research for the novel was obviously very thorough, with lashings of beautiful historically accurate description and detail. There were times when I was so taken in by the setting and the such high inequality and capitalist drives of the city as well as the oppression by rulers that, had this setting not existed in the past, I could have believed it to have been a dystopian commentary on modern society. Burton doesn't miss a trick here, interweaving multiple threads and secrets and building to one of the best and most unexpected (yet not "twisty") endings I could have hoped for. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

9/10