Tulip Fever
Book Tracking
Sign up to add this book to your recommneded, reading, or planned reading list.
Book Covers
Multiple editions, click to view covers:
Book Details
Written by Deborah Moggach.
Buy this on Amazon
($14.00)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
In Tulip Fever, acclaimed author Deborah Moggach has created that rarest of novels--a literary tour de force that is also brilliantly, compulsively readable. Not since Patrick Suskind's Perfume has a work of fiction so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion.In 1630s Amsterdam, tulip fever has seized the populace. Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.
Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.
In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach deftly brings to life a world of art, beauty, lust, greed, deception--and tulips.
Deborah Moggach is the author of twelve previous novels. She lives in London.
But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.
In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach deftly brings to life a world of art, beauty, lust, greed, deception--and tulips.
User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
miss_read thinks this book is Nothing Special.
Set in Amsterdam in the 1630s, this is the story of a wealthy merchant, Cornelis Sandvoort, and his beautiful, much-younger wife, Sophia. The merchant commissions an artist, Jan van Loos, to paint a portrait of the couple, and the wife and the artist embark on an affair. The story is supposed to be about betrayal, deception, greed, etc., but to me it read more like a silly romance novel. There wasn't enough depth of feeling on the main characters' parts for me to really care about their betrayals. The parts about the mad tulip bulb speculation of the time, however, was fascinating, as I'd known nothing about it. The author did a better job of describing the setting than she did the characters who inhabit it. The whole story seems to turn on a case of mistaken identity, which isn't really believable. The story of Maria, the Sandvoort's servant, is far more interesting than that of Cornelis, Sophia and Jan.
This was a quick, light read. Not objectionable, but not worth remembering for long.