January 22, 2025
The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton
This novel, which has been on my shelves for many years, finally got its turn. Jessie Burton’s debut novel that came out in 2014, and is a mesmerising work of historical fiction. Burton was inspired by a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where she saw on display, a miniature house from the late 17th century that belonged to a "Petronella Oortman". Learning that Petronella spent as much on this doll house as a normal house would have cost at the time, Burton’s interest was piqued. Who would do such a thing?Cabinet houses such as this were popular among the Dutch upper classes during this period. They were often wedding gifts, displayed at the front of the house where guests could see them, with additions and embellishments made over time.
Burton’s fictional Petronella is barely eighteen and when the novel begins, she arrives at her new home in Amsterdam, to join her husband Johannes Brandt, a wealthy trader. Nella bears an ancient Dutch family name (Oortman) but the family is poor, and her marriage to Johannes is a way to secure her future. Young and naive, she has no idea what to expect from her new family, and the Brandt household are a strange lot. Johannes is absent when she arrives; instead she meets his austere and stern sister Marin, the maid Cornelia whose eyes and ears miss nothing, and the manservant Otto who is the first black person that Nella has ever seen. Otto is an oddity in Amsterdam but within this home, he is cared for and along with Corneila, works to keep the household running smoothly. When Johannes eventually appears, he is pleased to see Nella, but remains preoccupied with his work. If Nella expected love, she does not find it in Johannes.
One day Johannes brings Nella a present, a gesture of conciliation. It is no ordinary present. It is a miniature cabinet house, an exact replica of the Brandt house. Marin is incensed at the expense (3000 guilders, Johannes says, carelessly), while Nella is insulted by the insinuation that she is a child who needs a doll house to distract her. Regardless, the miniature house is now hers, to do with as she pleases. An enigmatic advertisement by a miniaturist catches her eye in the local trade papers. Nella writes, seeking a few objects for her cabinet house. She soon receives the miniatures she requested, each of them exquisitely crafted. But there is something more in the package - a few additional objects that she clearly did not request. When Nella examines these, she is suspicious and uneasy - the objects belong to the house, and their precise detail is something the miniaturist could not possibly know. She feels watched. Thus begins an exchange with the miniaturist, letters from Nella and unsolicited tiny figurines from the miniaturist. Nella becomes convinced that the miniaturist has prophetic powers, that through the figurines she sends Nella, she may be trying to warn her.
While the miniaturist is Nella’s big secret, the other members of the Brandt household have their own, and as these are gradually revealed, the family plunges deep into crisis. In the end it is on Nella that the burden rests, to try and save them all.
An atmospheric novel, beautifully written, Jessie Burton brings 17th century Amsterdam alive for the reader.
How to Live, by Sarah Bakewell
This is a book that tries to answer a very fundamental question, How to Live? Not how we should live, in the sense of morality, but how to live a good life, a fully human, satisfying, and flourishing one. Sarah Bakewell tries to answer this question through the medium of the life and writings of one man, Michael de Montaigne, the man who single-handedly created the literary genre of the essay, and gave it its name. This book is both philosophy and biography, and it makes for fascinating reading.
Montaigne was a French nobleman who, after serving as the mayor of Bordeaux, retired to live a more private, more reflective life, managing his estate, making wine, reading and writing. He was a memoirist, who, unlike other writers of his time, did not write about his own deeds and achievements, or the historical events of the day.
He wrote about himself and his experience of life. He examined his thoughts, his fears, and his reactions to different situations, and he wrote about them in a way that no one else had done before. He wondered about people, the way they lived, and why they did the things they did. And since he was the example closest to hand of a human being going about his business, he wondered about himself.
The full title of this book is, How to Live: A life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. The book is divided into twenty sections. Each section offers a different answer to the question of How to Live? There is, obviously, no one correct or complete answer to this question. Each of the answers presented here comes at the question from a different angle.
Don't be afraid of death, pay attention to your life as it happens, question everything, learn to get along with others and to cope with loss, don't let habit cloud your awareness, learn to live temperately, reflect on yourself and your life, don't waste time on regrets, stop trying to control everything, make peace with being imperfect and so on.
None of this new or radical. Many people besides Montaigne have come to the same conclusions about living a good life. What makes this book different is the manner in which these ideas are presented. Each section tells a story about Montaigne's life, something that he did, or something that happened to him, that gave him an idea or led him to an insight.
This book is as much about Montaigne the person, as it is about what he believed and what he wrote. It's a biography, but not a linear one. In the first section we find the man in his thirties, having a near-death experience. It is in section three that we read about his childhood and his education. Section five finds him confronting the loss of one of his closest and most intimate friends.
Sarah Bakewell writes about each of these experiences in Montaigne's life and goes on to describe how the experience influenced his thinking and what he went on to say about it in his essays. This becomes the medium to answer the question, How to Live? She weaves together the threads of biography and philosophy with a great deal of skill. As you read, you get to know Montaigne. You get a close up look at this one person's life, and somehow, it becomes a look at yourself as well.