Tracy Chevalier’s Lady and the Unicorn centers around the weaving of the famous Unicorn Tapestries much as Girl with a Pearl Earring centered around Vermeer painting that work. I like the way Chevalier works; I like the way a work of art is used as a focus and a catalyst. I don’t like most of her characters, which makes the books rather chilly reads; there’s a distance kept between the reader and the inhabitants of the book which isn’t unlike that between a viewer and the inhabitants of a painting. Even when you’re inside the head of one of the more sympathetic characters at a very intense moment there’s still a certain detachment. The chapters rotate POV among a selection of the major characters; it’s almost like an exercise in writing. I’m an art geek, so I love all the details about working in the 1400’s here, and the tiny bit of weaving I did in school made this accessible. If nothing else, it’s a very pretty hardcover, and now I desperately want a) to go stand in the middle of the room hung with these tapestries and b) tapestries of my own. Recommended, but not with a whole lot of warmth.
Chevalier’s Lady and the Unicorn (recycled review)
This entry was posted in art, books, history, literary fiction and tagged tapestry, The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier, Weaving. Bookmark the permalink.