The Miniaturist

by Jessie Burton

[celinenyx]

There are three reasons I bought The Miniaturist. It was cheap, has a lovely cover, and has a historical setting in Amsterdam - finally a book that features my country!

I didn't start with any particularly high expectations, because historical novels aren't necessarily my favourite kind of books, and the average rating on Goodreads isn't all that great either. I did quickly fall in love with the characters of The Miniaturist. I was intrigued by the home life of Nella and how she deals with being swooped away from anything she knows on the countryside and surviving in an Amsterdam she has only heard of.

The Amsterdam Ms Burton describes is fabulous. I really enjoyed the way Nella visits places I have visited in Amsterdam myself. The author really captured the feel of the bustling sixteenth century city, and I felt she did sufficient research. The element I wasn't much enamoured with was the plot.

I feel like this book would have been much better if it had kept its focus on the Brandt household and the social struggles, rather than introducing a weird subplot featuring the miniaturist. Every time a miniature arrived, I felt like the story was slipping. There was simply nothing interesting about it. All of the miniaturist scenes felt very deus ex machina, like some divine intervention that didn't even serve a purpose in the end.

About halfway, I lost interest in the book. The pages that so quickly turned when I started, all of a sudden became a slog. The final impression The Miniaturist has left on me is that this was a good idea, a book with great promise, but one that could have been improved if it had had a different focus. Maybe if it had paid more attention to Nella herself, or the 17th century society in Amsterdam, anything deeper really, I would have enjoyed The Miniaturist more.