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Fiction. Literature. Romance. Historical Fiction. HTML:A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier�s answer to the mystery behind one of the art world�s great masterpieces�a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown�until now. Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the house�mother and daughter, servant, and lady-in-waiting�before taking his designs north to the Brussels workshop where the tapestries are to be woven. There, master weaver Georges de la Chapelle risks everything he has to finish the tapestries�his finest, most intricate work�on time for his exacting French client. The results change all their lives�lives that have been captured in the tapestries, for those who know where to look. In The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier weaves fact and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry�an extraordinary story exquisitely told..… (more)
User reviews
One look at Le Viste's daughter Claude and he is in love, big style. They are almost caught in the act and because of this he (and she) are kept under close watch. He is dragged into the families unsettled relationships and lives. We then meet the actual weaver and his family during Nicolas' journeys to Brussells. He acts out his desires a few times more there with the resulting consequences not quite being what you expect. During the time it takes to make the tapestries we know a lot about all of the characters from themselves.
Wonderful prose, made all the better with each chapter being picked up by another character. A trait I don't always enjoy but it really worked in this novel. The description and feelings Chevalier evokes are a pleasure and this book should be a fabulous journey with a satisfying ending.
The tapestries described are gorgeous, made more so at the hands of Chevalier. It is a heady mix of art, history and fiction. Chevalier has made it as accurately possible with the facts available to her but admits that some parts have had to be changed in the interests of fiction namely because all of the details weren't available to her. I don't feel it matters as you still get the essence of how devine tapestries like this would be. It is testiment to her imagination that we get to see the story behind a set of them.
Nicolas beds whatever girl he is able to work into the horizontal and has no feeling for them afterward. At the very beginning, he encounters a servant girl in the LeViste household who is in danger of losing her place because he has impregnated her. His idea of shouldering responsibility is to toss a few coins her way. Doubtless, this is the way such matters were usually handled during the 15th/16th century when servant girls found themselves in a fix, but it does not help me to like Nicolas. He takes a liking to the eldest daughter of his patron and plans to seduce her – an easy task, for the girl’s hormones are raging – but never gets the chance. Even later on when Nicolas travels to Brussels to help with execution of the tapestries he is arrogant and dismissive both of the work the weavers do and of Brussels itself. Fortunately, time and circumstances do something toward redeeming Nicolas in my eyes, but Chevalier does not try to impose our standards upon him, nor for that matter upon any of the other characters. Their time and place dictate the way their stories turn out and I like that.
I liked the chapters concerning Genevieve and Claude LeViste, the mother and eldest daughter of Jean’s household well enough, but I truly liked the ones concerning the Chapelle family in Brussels – in particular the blind Alienor – the best. Poor Alienor is being pursued by the woad-maker (woad is a blue dye), Jaques LeBoeuf, who smells revoltingly – and eternally - of sheep piss – the down side of his trade. He wants to marry her and badgers her parents to agree to it. They do not want to make Alienor unhappy, but after all she is damaged and LeBoeuf being their source for woad – well, business is business. But not to worry. Alienor has a solution to her problem.
I think I have read reviews somewhere where the reviewer found the copious descriptions of how the tapestries were woven tedious, but I did not find that they took away from my enjoyment of the book. This book is not the same as Girl With A Pearl Earring, but I liked it just as well.
We’re intially introduced to Jean Le Viste and his family; his daughter Claude is one of the main characters in the beginning, but a) she’s not very likeable, and b) she disappears for the whole middle section of the book and only surfaces briefly once before the very end. Additionally, the character of Nicolas has some motivational problems. On one hand, he’s an arogant, cheap womanizer who seduces anything with breasts and can’t wait to “plow” Claude in her fathers house. On the other, he’s a likeable, charming, struggling painter who saves Alienor from a life of misery. Make up your mind, fellow.
I felt that the language was a little too obnoxious at parts, especially with the times of prayers and the holidays. Sext, May Day, Ascension Day, Candlemas? These mean nothing to me so it’s hard to tell what the real passing of time is. I understand they’re part of the language, so I got over it, but toward the end they resurfaced a lot. And the characters voices and language when they were talking to each other also seemed unrealistic at times.
There’s a clear plot device (petite Claude) that is meant to shock the reader; but we’re not stupid and it falls flat. Overall, I wasn’t a fan, nor was I wholly disappointed with this book. It wouldn’t be the first one I’d recommed, but I’ve read worse.
Nicholas is a jerk, through and through. We learn from the outset that he’ll try to screw (or plow as he so elegantly puts it) anything in skirts. What an asshole. But he’s talented so people put up with him. Sounds like familiar territory. The details of guilds and weaving and the running of the shop were interesting although I have no idea how accurate any of it was. The central family is very tight-knit and it was enjoyable to read about how they looked out for each other and protected each other. The whole was just as important as the individual, something you rarely see now.
It is the story of the making of a panel of tapestries for the le Viste
The tapesteries made by weavers in Brussels show the 5 senses and end in A mon seul desir which means different things to different people.
Informative and entertaining.