54  Netherlands – Deborah Moggach – Tulip Fever (Score 6.4)

 Sophia opens the story. Her old husband, Cornelis, intends to have their portrait painted by a young artist, Jan van Loos. We learn that they own a number of paintings, including “Susannah and the Elders”. Herrengracht in Amsterdam is where they live in one of the narrow, but high, buildings which front one of the canals, lading straight to the water.

 Maria is their serving girl. On page 22 she goes to bed, leaving her shoes upside down (to keep away the witches). When I was still at school, about 50 years ago, I stayed with a German family on a school exchange. When they had boiled eggs for breakfast they always knocked their spoons through the bottom “so that the witches could not use them as boats”. For a joke I copied them. I still do it all these years later, without even thinking.

 Tulip-mania runs through the story, affecting the lives of several of the characters. The writing is beautiful and the stories fit together piece by piece, told in short interweaving sections for the lives of the different members of the cast, Sophia the wife, Cornelis the husband, Maria the maid, William the lover of Maria, and Jan van Loos, the portrait painter.

 I gave the book a score of eight from ten.