How would you or I react? A bit like Nella, I suspect, tentative at first but, quite soon, opening forbidden doors and going places we know we shouldn’t. As things become bizarre in the big house, which they do almost from the beginning, it isn’t the responses of a provincial girl who is completely out of her depth that we follow. But Nella’s is a 21st Century sensibility. Using the continuous present tense that historical novelists often go for these days, Jessie Burton is good at evoking the sights and smells of an Amsterdam we can’t help but recognise – all those other novels and films, to say nothing of the city breaks many of her readers will have been on – and it’s perfectly charming to wander around with her. I never imagine for a moment that these are real 17th Century Dutch men and women, that their religious beliefs (or whatever) are real, and… and so on. I keep banging on about historical novels because it’s impossible to forget that you’re inside one as you read. Novels like this one have taught us that, faced with such a stark choice in almost any century before our own, few women would refuse. She is the eighteen-year-old daughter of a recently dead country gentleman, impoverished by his own profligacy, and her mother has advised her that marriage to the wealthy merchant in his late thirties will be the best that she can do. And absolutely nobody in the big house where she lives, or out of it, is offering any guidance to this young lady recently down from the country. Petronella, always known as Nella, tries to pick her way through an Amsterdam strewn with so many carefully researched historical references that she’s bound to get lost. Where some questions aren't answered.This is debut novel by a young author, and… and what? Jessie Burton is ambitious, sometimes overreaching herself as she strives for the telling phrase that will fix her characters into the 17th Century Dutch context beloved of the writers of historical fiction. That there is a mystical element to the story, and that does impact the plot of the series. It is mentioned in the book that the series is based on. Through the ages, were very "modern" in their thinking. I think it is reasonable to believe that some women, To have a modern woman's sensibilities and view point.
There are reviews that suggest that the central female character tends I find it interesting that this series could very well be a play, because there is a small cast of actors, and the events take place in mostly indoor settings. Further, while visiting Amsterdam Holland, I was able to visit a museum there that has the centuries old miniature houses that are like the one in this series. The production valuesĪre quite striking because of the fidelity in representing the environment of the time in history that the drama takes place in. The directing and writing are also very good.
This is an interesting and well acted drama.
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