Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Price Rs 819 (got it for 639 from Flipkart.com)
Fiction


The painting in the cover is by the famous painter Johannes Vermeer (I didn't know until I read the book and started deciphering his life thanks to google).But the focus of the novel is not the painter but the model, Griet a sixteen year old girl who is the protagonist..She is forced to take up the job of a maid at Johannes Vermeer's house after her father a respected tile artist is blinded in an accident..She is approved by Vermeer himself after he visit Giet at her home with his wife Catherine and finding out her sensibility while arranging vegetables cut on the platter in her kitchen..She is put in a new house always as a stranger delibrately rooted out from her favourite base, yet she manages to take care of the large household along with another maid who gets jealous of her after a while, she also given charge of the care of six children ,while she herself is only a teenager..In spite of all this she enjoys one priveldge that nobody (not even Catherine) enjoys , that is getting inside Vermeer's studio...She does  the cleaning ,and she proves to be a perfectionist at it...With her workmanship,which Vermeer starts to appreciate ,takes her as an assistant to help him with painting...She eventually becomes the model of his painting which almost ruins her life....She is fascinated by her master's work and her liking for him grows every single day.. Pieter (butcher's son) adds up as a character attracted to Giet and makes no reservations of his intentions to marry her...
Giet's character is a winner with her quiet  manners, sharp observations,dedication to the family she is working for and to her own family....The novel beautifully draws the seventeenth century lifestyle of the social set up the divide between the rich and the poor, between the catholic and the protestant  without much deliberate effort crafted along the story line..The quarantine declared and her sister's death all adds up to the well written backdrop..
Chevalier brillaintly puts forth Griet sense for art  for example, she never cleans the window so that it doesn't alter the lighting of the room, once she rearranges blue cloth to add a dash of disorder for the painting Vermeer was currently working on.. ...These are the suttle things, Chevalier scores by highlighting the character's worth...
Its a breezy read altogether..

Footnote: Vermmer's will indeed mentioned a maid ..In some texts mentions about a baker who traded with the paintings Vermeer had painted in exchange of the debt the family had..In short certain things we read in the novel might have been true...