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Tag Archives: Amsterdam

Always Ask for More: The History of a Pleasure Seeker

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1907, Amsterdam, erotic, historical fiction, novelty, picaresque, pleasure, Richard Mason, social class, twentieth century

Review: History of a Pleasure Seeker, by Richard Mason
Knopf, 2012. 277 pp. $26

Piet Barol, a young man from Leiden who appreciates the fine things he can’t afford, has everything and nothing going for him. He has no accomplishments or talents, save an ability to draw and a decent singing voice; no bloodlines to boast of; and his meager wardrobe consists of more-or-less presentable finery he’s bought second-hand (from university students in hock up to their eyeballs). These are rickety assets on which to build one’s fortune in 1907, but Piet won’t settle for less than the life to which he plans to become accustomed. And he figures that he’ll win the day through charm, manners, good looks and, most important, his conceit that he can get anyone to like him.

Photocrom print of Nieuwmarkt en Waag, Amsterdam, between 1890 and 1905 (Courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons).

Photocrom print of Nieuwmarkt en Waag, Amsterdam, between 1890 and 1905 (Courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons).

Accordingly, when Mr. and Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts, pillars of Amsterdam merchant wealth, interview Piet in their sumptuous home as a prospective tutor for their young son, Piet boldly (but with proper deference and discretion) acts as if he belongs. He has no other prospects, and if he’s turned down, has no idea what he’ll do. On the other hand, he has no experience dealing with children, was himself a mediocre scholar, and, what’s more, the Vermeulen-Sickerts are deliberately vague when describing Egbert, their son. Through tactful questioning, Piet learns that the boy never goes outside and has a particular way of relating to others. Nevertheless, the Vermeulen-Sickerts expect that Piet will “cure” Egbert, which the young man from Leiden promises to do. So they hire him–upon which he asks for, and receives, a raise.

Naturally, the situation presents other perils. The Vermeulen-Sickerts have two beautiful, marriageable daughters, spoiled young women who immediately set upon Piet’s destruction. The younger, Louisa, cold and devious, suspects him as a fake and invents ways to trip him up, starting with the first meal he shares with the family:

Piet took in the handwritten menu in front of him, the four crystal vases of orange roses that decorated the table, the two silver dishes piled high with blood oranges on the sideboard, and felt wonderfully proud of himself. If Louisa had expected him to be confounded by the oysters or the langoustines or the quail à la minute, she was disappointed–because [his mother] had foreseen just this eventuality and twice a year had served Piet the delicacies of her youth so that he might dine in sophisticated company one day, without shame.

The elder daughter, Constance, flirts with him for the pleasure of rousing an attraction that she can then reject (and for which he’d be fired, should he pursue her in any way). The butler and footman would like to cozy up to him too–his looks attract both men and women–and the lady of the house seems available as well. What’s a fellow to do? Win them all over, but without compromising himself or his ambitions.

Rest assured that in this picaresque, often hilarious tale, our hero has plenty of erotic adventures, all graphically described, and sexual tension hums in the background, even–especially–when everybody’s fully clothed. But if Piet Barol were merely a hedonist on the make, The History of a Pleasure Seeker would be far less interesting than it is. Rather, Mason has thought about how being surrounded by exquisite sculptures, eating foie gras off Sèvres china, and soaking in a hot bath for the first time can change a person’s outlook.

In doing so, he’s underlined a forgotten point about the modern age: It wasn’t so long ago that the simplest luxuries were beyond any but the very rich. We take that for granted, because today, they’re commonplace. But have we deadened ourselves to the real pleasure they give, and does that mean we have to seek greater and greater novelty to arouse our senses?

Moreover, Piet’s presence changes his employers’ lives too, because he’s a reminder of the physical and emotional intimacy they’ve cast away in exchange for creature comforts. As such, The History of a Pleasure Seeker examines social class and how the need to be superior exacts a price from those who fall victim to it, a theme reminiscent of novels by Edith Wharton and Henry James.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Annotating Others’ Lives: The Minimalist

06 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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Amsterdam, Calvinism, doll's houses, feminism, historical fiction, Holland, Jessie Burton, magic, miniatures, seventeenth century, social repression, women's rights

Review: The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton
HarperCollins, 2014. 400 pp. $27

Eighteen-year-old Petronella Oortman has left her small Dutch town for Amsterdam and marriage to a wealthy, much older businessman she has barely met. Nella, as she’s called, could have done much worse. She comes from an old, respected family, but her father has gone bankrupt, and, considering that women have no power to make their own lives, a good marriage is all Nella can hope for. Since Johannes Brandt ranks among the merchant princes of Amsterdam, the world capital of trade in the late seventeenth century, she has instantly achieved a status to be envied.

Petronella Oortman's doll's house, anonymous craftsman, 1686-1710. Petronella and her husband, Johannes, were real historical figures (Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, anonymous craftsman, 1686-1710. Petronella and her husband, Johannes, were real historical figures (Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

But that’s not how she feels entering her new home. Her husband isn’t even there to greet her, and when he does show up, he seems indifferent. Johannes doesn’t even assert his conjugal rights, about which Nella has mixed feelings. She longs for affection and warmth, but her mother has lectured her about the pains and discomforts of marriage, to be dutifully endured, because that’s a woman’s role. However, it’s not just Johannes who slights her. Nella’s sister-in-law, Marin, finds fault with everything the bride says or does, as if she resents her brother marrying, especially that one.

Yet there’s much more to Marin, a woman who keeps maps, souvenirs from the Far East, and business ledgers in her bedroom, and treats her brother as if he were a greenhorn at trade.


Marin starts to shift in Nella’s mind. From her drab black clothes, Marin rises like a phoenix, enveloped in her nutmeg scent–no lily for her, no floral nicety. Covered in the symbols of the city, Marin is a daughter of its power–she is a secret surveyor of maps, an annotator of specimens–an annotator of something else as well, not so easy to slot into a category.


Indeed, Marin isn’t the only manipulator in Nella’s life. Johannes’s wedding gift is a miniature house, inlaid with pewter and tortoise shell, a precise replica of the one they live in. At first, the gift bewilders and angers Nella. By giving her a doll’s house, is Johannes making a not-so-veiled allusion to her youth and the difference between their ages? But to amuse herself (she’s got little else to do), she orders furnishings for the gift house from a miniaturist, who sends her more than she’s ordered, all exact renderings of the inhabitants, dogs included, and the furniture. Each delivery contains a pithy aphorism or exhortation, riddles that leave Nella perplexed.

Only an insider could have created these things with such accuracy. What’s more, as events progress, and Johannes’s business empire shows severe cracks, the miniatures seem to foretell a bleak future, if not ordain it. Who’s watching or pulling the strings?

Normally, I shy away from fiction in which magic plays too great a role, especially as a deus ex machina. But to Burton, magic’s a tool, not a toy, and neither she nor her characters are saying, “Gee whiz, look what I can do!” Rather, The Miniaturist is about freedom, or lack of it, and the willingness to choose a way of life despite what others may think. Burton does an excellent job conveying the social policing through which neighbor watches (and reports on) neighbor, branding ordinary desires as sinful and stamping out individuality. The very creation of a miniature house inlaid with tortoise shell creates tension between a longing for beauty (and to show off) and fear of what others might say, perhaps from jealousy.

In this constrained environment, people are themselves miniatures, closeted in small moral and emotional spaces–invisible prisons, as Johannes calls them. There are secrets within secrets, lies within lies. Through their gradual revelation, Burton uncovers truths about how the world works, especially for women, and what few choices they have. That powerlessness is what Nella and Marin struggle against–Johannes too–and their engrossing story keeps the pages turning.

That said, I wish The Miniaturist went deeper, in two respects. Though I like the way Burton portrays the central characters, with internal conflicts and multiple layers, the town hypocrites, who make briefer appearances, could have worn capital H’s on their clothes. Also, and probably related, the religion feels put on, as if nobody in Amsterdam actually believed that stuff, when of course, they did.

In fact, by staying away from the religious core of Dutch life, I think Burton misses a great opportunity. The entire question of free will is central to Calvinist thought, yet nobody in the novel wrestles with it, except to worry that the civil authorities will punish them. Divine retribution seems far away, and yet in that time and place, it was a real concept.

Still, I enjoyed The Miniaturist and think it deserves its popularity.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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