Cheap Book Review
Books by library, Review by me.

[ The following books are in some way Awad related. Time passed, but I dutifully read each one but I am slow. Now I find I have nowhere to post my opinions, hence this post with three to follow.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring:
Tracy Chevaier
Reviewers Predisposition: Never not ever, would I have read a seventeenth century novel written by a “woman” revolving around the imagined romantic life of the painter Vermeer as seen through the eyes of an imaginary sixteen- year- old girl. Maverick, however, recommended it, and an excerpt I read demonstrated adroit writing .


The good:The Girl with a Pearl Earring is a one-sit-read. Even before opening the book Vermeer’s girl looks up to the reader from the book cover with allure and the reader is hooked. He wants to know this girl better and Tracy Chevaier has the writing talent to accommodate with seemingly effortless congruent syntax and an intelligent word selection. Before you know it you are two-thirds through the book. Now comes the good part, you'd say...

The Bad...the pages dwindle down to a precious few. Oh no, I was thinking, this can’t be real, Tracy Chevaier doesn’t know how to plot. But it’s true, she doesn’t. This realisation leads to a retroactive examination the storyline with unhappy results. Griet, the sixteen-year-old servant girl who is the eyes and mind of the book, is shallow and boring. She is a bit calculating and perceives all men as dullards. As I closed the pages to this soap opera I avoided looking at the cover. Tracy Chevaier accomplished one thing with my reading of this novel; I’ll never be able to look at Vermeer’s painting of the Girl with A Pearl Earring without seeing the little wench “Griet”.
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Next...
Ella Minnow Pea
-Mark Dunn