A lovely story and a great read. I had never heard of this author and was interested to find out that she is a best selling writer in the Netherlands and that this is the first of her books to be translated into English.
It is late in the seventeenth century in Northern Holland and Catrin, widowed early in rather suspicious circumstances, leaves her home village and becomes a housekeeper in Amsterdam. However, the past can very quickly become the present as secrets catch up with her and she moves on again, this time to Delft.
As well as being set in a precise time in history, the author also introduces several real people into her list of characters. These are mostly artists as Catrin has some talent for painting and becomes involved in the making of the famous blue and white Delft ware. Johannes Vermeer features quite heavily at one point in the story and I don’t really feel qualified to judge how accurate his description might be.
Through the story Catrin becomes involved with 3 brothers. One is her employer in Amsterdam, one her lover and the third her husband for a short time. Although set several centuries ago, there are many issues that feel very modern. We are still sorting out the place of women in society and in the workplace. There is still a huge problem with domestic abuse, virtually always with the woman being the victim and near the end of the book plague wipes out community after community, in Holland and the surrounding countries. A few years ago the reader may have felt this was a purely historical event, sadly of course we now know better.
My only criticism of this book is the occasional clunky translation but actually it did all I ask a novel to do. It kept me involved and interested, it entertained me and offered an intelligent, historical read. I would be happy to read more by Simone Van Der Vlugt … but will have to wait for the translators to play their part.