This is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer. A real discovery for me. The theme is very obvious from the Vermeer reproduction on the cover.
The narrator is Griet, a working class girl who is sent to work for the Vermeer family following an accident which prevents her father from carrying on working. The family are not particularly pleasant and the pace is quite slow, as she learns her work but is eventually asked by the painter to help mix his paints.
One of his wealthy patrons, who regards female servants as sexual cannon fodder, asks Vermeeer to paint her portrait for him, and he agrees to do so. Griet (for reasons less than 100% clear) is I think sexually quite obsessed by the painter. As the painting develops he asks her to wear one of his wife’s pearl earrings, and this involves her revealing her hair (apparently a sign of promiscuity) and to pierce her own ear before the earring is inserted, so a huge amount of sexual innuendo towards the end. She loses her job in consequence.
Subsequently, Vermeer has died, Griet has married her working class boyfriend and they have loads of children, like Vermeer.
A wonderful book.
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