Eventually Nella becomes just as watchful as the shadows around her and so begins the transition from powerless to sly, from puppet to master. Burton has created a slippery, shifting world where nothing is as it seems, where entrapment is indistinguishable from escape and the hunters, from the hunted. Nella is both threatened and comforted by the miniature puppets. Unprompted, she sends Nella miniatures of each member of the household, of private objects, of clues to how their stories will unfold. It starts innocently enough: Nella distracts herself by filling it with the things her disappointing marriage has failed to provide (a decorative betrothal cup, a baby’s cradle).īut the miniaturist – who Nella soon discovers is a strange woman with a penetrating stare – begins taking matters into her own hands.

Nella begins to correspond with the miniaturist responsible for the replica, requesting tiny objects to fill the house. Its detail is painstaking, its accuracy startling and its presence unsettling. The book’s title refers to a gift Nella is given by her new husband. If there is a predominant story question it is concerned with the peculiar and subjective nature of freedom, and whether there is any hope of these oppressed creatures finding it. Burton seems to have avoided an instantly apparent narrative arc: instead she drip feeds small questions, almost resolves them, then asks another, all the while giving the reader their fill of each new mystery while reserving enough answers to sustain their thirst. This feeling of recurring realisation is echoed by the structure of the plot itself. Johannes himself is full of surprising indiscretions and fighting against his unthinkable fate is what eventually unites Nella with this odd semblance of a family. But every character in this world, Nella included, has several metamorphoses and each time they re-emerge, we must give our vision a moment to adjust as our understanding of their reality shifts again and again (Marin is not as cold as she first appeared, Nella not as powerless, Cornelia the maid not as scornful and so on). Nella’s loneliness and frustration peak as she discovers that her husband is largely absent and entirely unromantic and that the head of the household is in fact his implacable and enigmatic sister. With the house comes Marin, Nella’s cold sister-in-law.

Burton also messes skilfully with proportion: Nella reaches her hand out in the dark and is surprised to find a door handle so near.

Book review the miniaturist