The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 30 March 2007
by Tracy Chevalier
In the mid 19th century, in an old Loire region chateau that was being surveyed by some French ministry of antiquities, six stunning woven tapestries were discovered. Badly in need of restoration, they were bought by the government and today reside in a Paris museum of the middle ages. These are the famous "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries, each depicting a lady in an allegorical pose depicting each of the five senses along with a unicorn in a field of flowers and creatures. Not much is known of the chain of possession, though they are assumed to have been made by northern weavers in the late 15th century. Tracy Chevalier, who made her name by inventing a story around another work of art, Girl with a Pearl Earring, returns to her forté with this entertaining novel. She depicts what she sees as a likely circle of players in the origin of these tapestries; the smug new member of the nobility who commissions them, his lovely wife and three daughters, the arrogant rake of a painter who designs them, and the family of Brussels weavers who actually execute his somewhat innovative designs. The mileu of the middle ages that Chevalier describes is actually quite believable. The theme that runs through the novel is that of social structures of the time and place, particularly with respect to the position of women in that society. The medieval art of tapestry weaving also is clearly well-researched. The history of the time, it seems, is less relevant to the story at hand, and some of the political atmosphere and outright grittiness one might expect of Paris in 1490 is lacking. In the meantime, Chevalier positions her characters in their time and inside the expectations of society, letting the reader draw his own political conclusions from the various affronts to modern sensibilities. There is a somewhat cinematic feel to the book, with some unlikely sounding situations, but the characters are complex enough to not be predictable. They are a randy bunch, though, especially Nicolas, the painter, who cuts a wide swath through the smitten women and girls of his city. With its shifting narrators, the book holds the reader's attention, an entertaining page-turner. It helps, along the way, that the book has nice color illustrations of parts of the actual tapestries. There's also much history of them out there on the Internet. For a story based on such an intensely visual experience, access to images adds depth to the reading.