Jessie Burton

The phenomenal Number One BestsellerWinner of the Specsavers National Book Award and Waterstones Book of the YearA Richard and Judy Book Club selectionThere is nothing hidden that will not be revealed . . . On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways . . .Nella is at first mystified by the closed world of the Brandt household, but as she uncovers its secrets she realizes the escalating dangers that await them all. Does the miniaturist hold their fate in her hands? And will she be the key to their salvation or the architect of their downfall?Beautiful, intoxicating and filled with heart-pounding suspense, Jessie Burton's magnificent debut novel The Miniaturist is a story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.

The Miniaturist

sariya

"True love was a flower in the gut, its petals unfurling inside out. You would risk all for love—blissful, never without its drops of dismay."

"How do I begin to love you?—the question, enormous, impossible to ignore, goes round and round in her head as she stares at him."

"When you have truly come to know a person, Nella—when you see beneath the sweeter gestures, the smiles—when you see the rage and the pitiful fear which each of us hide—then forgiveness is everything."

"She closes her eyes, remembering her mother's words—the girl wants love. She wants the peaches and the cream."

"And love has to come, otherwise I cannot live."

"I'd prefer to rise in love, she thinks—lifting up to the clouds, not plunging to the earth. She pictures herself, weightless and adored, delirious in ecstasy."

"For what am I, she wonders, but a product of my own imagination?"

"I will fight to emerge, she thinks—but the problem is that Nella has no idea where she is emerging. A dead end, she supposes. The end of a sack, a mute and feeble existence."

"She wants to be splintered by the cold, transfigured by the light. The canal path is empty, the ice a ribbon of white silk between the Herengracht houses. The moon above is larger than she has ever seen it, larger even than last night; an astonishing pale circle of power. It looks as if she could reach out and touch it, that God has pushed it down from the heavens for her human hand to hold."

"She wants to wash him from tip to toe, to make him fresh again, make him smell of spice, cardamom caught in the nail."

The Miniaturist quotes

Join the club