International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award 2002

The story is set in 15th Century Paris and the author Tracy Chevalier sets the story around the art of tapestry weaving.

The main character is a Parisian artist called Nicolas Des Innocents (a misnomer if ever there was one as innocent he is not). He has very few redeeming qualities. He is commissioned by a nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a set of tapestries.

He cunningly manages to get around Jean Le Viste to change his mind about having battle scenes in his tapestries and instead builds a beautiful story around a Lady and a unicorn and uses Jean's daughter's face as the Lady in the design.

The characters are divided into two families - In Paris there is the family of the nobleman Jean Le Viste, his wife Genevieve de Nantere and his children, in particular the precocious 14 year old daughter Claude.

In Brussels there is the master weaver (lissier) George De La Chapelle, his wife Christine du Sablon, his son George Le Jeune and his blind daughter Alienor.

The artist Nicolas Des Innocents is the link between these two families as he travels between Parish and Brussels working with the weavers while he is painting the designs for the tapestries but he also fancies himself as a ladies man and is kept busy trying to seduce the daughters of both the nobleman and the master weaver.

The book tells us the story through the thoughts of the main characters. The first narrator is Nicolas himself, then Claude, her mother Genevieve, then it moves to Brussels and the story is taken up by George the master weaver, his wife Christine, daughter Alienor and Philippe De La Tour, the cartoonist who enlarges the paintings so that the weavers can follow a pattern for the tapestries.

While learning a lot about the art of tapestry weaving we also get a lot of insight into the type of lives that people lived in the 15th Century.

Something that struck me very strongly was the way that women of all classes were prisoners in every sense. To have been born a woman then was a curse indeed. They were just used as objects to obtain titles and money and bear sons and be playthings for men. This is particularly true in the callous way the maid Marie Celeste was treated by Nicolas and Claude too.

There is little but pain and drudgery suffered by the weavers and a total lack of respect that the aristocracy had for gifted artists, making unnecessary demands for them to work to short deadlines just on their whims.

I found little to like about any of the men in the story, with one exception and that was Phillipe the cartoonist, who very nobly, saves the day for Alienor. None of the other men in the story are very appealing. Alienor's father, who is a talented hard working man, is heartless and cold even down to the way he speaks to Alienor in front of everybody when he notices she is pregnant. Jean Le Viste, Claude's father is completely indifferent to his family and particularly his poor wife who can't provide him with a son.

I enjoyed the book and found it easy reading. The deadline set for the finishing of the tapestries gave a sense of urgency and worry for these hard working people and kept me turning the pages.
It was also an easy way to learn about tapestry making at that time and I would like to have a close look at some tapestries now to see the intricacies of the stitching.

In the early stages of the book Nicolas is portrayed as a cunning lecher. He is cold and indifferent to others, particularly Marie Celeste, who is carrying his child. He says things like, he might look for a wife when he is old so that he will have someone to look after him. He is a totally selfish man and he gets his comeuppance at the end as he is set up by Genevieve to marry Claude's plain looking (according to him) lady in writing. I did not find the author's portrayal of him to be altogether credible, I thought his badness a little over the top at the beginning of the story and then petered out towards the end.

My favorite character was Alienor who despite and because of her disability managed to get a lot of joy from her life particularly when with Nicolas's help she managed to save herself from a horrendous marriage to the smelly woad dryer Jacques Le Boeuf. I would have thrown myself in the river if that were my lot. It was also very pleasing that she was able to have her way with Nicolas on her own terms. If the same thing had happened to Claude she would have wound up in a nunnery! For keeps.

If I had to compare this to Tracy Chevalier's first book The Girl with a Pearl Earring, I would say I enjoyed this one more. There was an old fashioned bawdiness about it that I liked. Not a book of any great depth, but a pleasant easy read with a little bit of learning thrown in.

Ann Little
Klear Book Club
Kilbarrack
Dublin 5