Book-Girl In Hyacinth Blue

Girl In Hyacinth Blue is an unusual book, in that it really does not take a novel's usual form...it is more like a series of connected short stories, and in some ways I liked that and in some ways I thought it could have been done better.

The first chapter finds a man who has a painting, ostensibly by a famous Dutch master artist. However the painting has no authentication, so it could be that by the artist or it could be a very good imitator. He can't get the painting evaluated though, as he got the painting from his father, who, in WW II was a Nazi officer who stole the painting from an empty home...empty because he sent the Jews that resided there to their probably deaths in concentration camps.

The chapter ends ambiguously, without resolution, and the next chapter takes the reader back to that Jewish family in Berlin, and we find what the painting meant to them. The next chapter goes back to the previous owner of the painting, and so on, until we get to when the painting was originally done, and we find out how the artist came to paint it.

I like the whole concept here. The author Susan Vreeland does a generally nice job in showing what the painting meant to all that had owned through the centuries. But I also wish we had seen some short interludes into the first chapter portion, so we had more insight into how the most recent owner solved his dilemma...does he admit to the world that his deceased father did this despicable act, or does he continue to hide the painting from the world, and never know for sure if it was the Dutch master. If that had been done, I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more, and I think the book would have been better.

All in all, it was not bad at all. And it was a good change of pace in styles. But it does not make me wish to pursue other books by Vreeland. A fast moderately enjoyable read about how art interacts with the human psyche.