A pious citizenry must decide if the new technology is a soulless black art or a mechanized fulfillment of God’s will. The result is a population “living in the shadows between lies and truth.”īy juxtaposing the lexicon of traditional printing with references to modern concepts like intellectual property theft, Christie spotlights intriguing parallels between 15th-century Europe and the digital media of the 21st-century world. Burton adroitly depicts a culture of contradiction: a love of affluence and indulgence chafing against the impulse for God-fearing abstinence. But the novel is nonetheless a seductive meditation on greed, power and the tortuous journey even the well heeled must endure for self-possession. The sole figure to aid her quest is an anonymous and uncanny “miniaturist” whose exquisitely crafted work not only arrives to fill Nella’s cabinet unbidden but also hides enigmatic, prophetic messages.īurton’s narration frequently says too much, and she isn’t immune to cliché (“Nella thought her heart might burst”) or sentimentality (Nella and the friends she eventually finds “make a hopeful tapestry”). While the dollhouse, a thoughtless gift from the withdrawn Johannes, silently mocks Nella - “a monument to her powerlessness” - the young wife strives to become a street-smart matron. This retelling depicts Nella as a country naïf who, after marrying Johannes Brandt, finds herself captive in a forbidding household ruled by an uncommunicative sister-in-law. (The cabinet is now displayed in the Rijksmuseum.) In its day, Petronella’s “cabinet house,” a nine-room tortoiseshell cupboard replete with pewter inlays, gold-embossed wallpaper and tiny household items, cost 10 times as much as a common laborer’s home. THE MINIATURIST By Jessie Burton Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.īurton’s debut novel finds its inspiration in a 17th-century hobby for the rich: an ostentatious dollhouse owned by the wife of an Amsterdam merchant.

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