Review: The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully written and highly imaginative story that reads so easily I continuously lost track of time whenever I picked it up. I truly could not get this one out of my head - the characters alone are captivating, mysterious, and almost frustratingly elusive. For the book's entirety I was spell-bound not only by the unexplainable magic of Nella's cabinet-house and life-like dolls but also by the human characters and their constant presence, lurking in the passageways and shadows just beyond our reach, guarding their many secrets, indulgences, and guilty pleasures.

Heart-wrenching and sensitive, dark and mysterious, I loved getting to know the few characters throughout this story whose lives centred almost entirely around the cultivating and maintaining of each others most precious secrets. Fear of the Church, of the Burgermasters, and of themselves, I felt that Jessie Burton did a wonderful job of keeping us just beyond grasping what made these characters tick - many remained a complete mystery up to the very end.

Having lived in Amsterdam myself for almost a year at the time of reading this, it was as if I was rediscovering the city all over again through Nella's 17th-century eyes, strolling familiar streets whose existence remain today. Although drastically different now than the Amsterdam of long ago, Burton's incredible historical accuracy throughout shed so much light on the Dutch's idiosyncrasies and often times frustrating hypocrisies that I felt comforted and armed with a new knowledge of the complicated, sordid past of my new home.

My only reservations would be with how the story ended. Without giving anything away, I would have loved to come away from this story with more closure for certain characters, more answers, and more about the Miniaturist!

Although I would guess that this was exactly Burton's aim. The story began in mystery and shadow, and so it ends in mystery and shadow.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction - bonus if you love a good mystery as well as some elements of magic / fantasy.


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