Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > The Miniaturist > Status Update

‘There is a moment - one split-hair second of time - when the chamber falls out of Nella’s reach. Free of a body, of a mind, she grapples with the air, trying to stop her crashing world. Then, as Johannes collapses to the floor, the plain Nella had tried to keep at bay floods through her. The chamber becomes shrill with noise, swamping her, pushing her under. She tries to resist, forcing herself past the people’

‘It seems that Marin viewed marriage as a ceding of something, whereas so many women - including my own mother, Nella realises - see it as the only possible form of influence a woman may have. Marriage is supposed to harness love, to increase a woman’s power, Nella supposes. But does it? Marin believed herself to be more powerful without it.‘

“No woman can be an apprentice,” Cornelia snaps. “No man is keen to train a woman. No guild except the seamstresses or stinking peat-carriers would have her. And what would be the point? Men are the makers of this world.”

‘It’s my fault, Nella thinks - I carried Jack’s doll inside after Marin threw him out. There he was the next morning, laid out on the front step, an omen of what was to come. If it was the miniaturist who laid him there, a horrid presage of what was to happen in this hall - why would she do that - why insist that this poisonous creature should stay close at all?’

‘Good God, she thinks. What is happening here? For this is further than the miniaturist has ever gone. A little gold key, a rocking cradle, two dogs - these could all arguably constitute the pleasant aspects of life in a merchant’s house. But this - these dolls - are different. How does the miniaturist know what Marin wears against her skin, or that Peebo has flown away?’

“Do you know what they do to men like my brother?” she says. “They drown them. The holy magistrates put weights on their necks and push them in the water.” A wave of devastation seems to draw down Marin’s body. “But even if they dragged Johannes back up and cut him open,” she says, “they still wouldn’t find what they wanted.”

‘There is nothing else in the package - no note, no explanation, just the strange motto of defiance and this flurry of gifts. Cornelia swore she delivered the letter telling the miniaturist to desist. So why didn’t he obey me? ...But as she looks at these pieces - their extraordinary beauty, their unreachable purpose, Nella wonders if she really wants the miniaturist to cease.’

‘The accuracy of the cabinet is eerie, as if the real house has been shrunk, its body sliced in two and its organs revealed. The nine rooms, from the working kitchen, the salon, up to the loft where the peat and firewood are stored away from damp, are perfect replicas. “It’s got a hidden cellar too,” Johannes says, lifting the floor up between the working and best kitchens, to reveal a concealed empty space.’

‘For two years, Nella practised being a lady. She walked with new poise - though there was nowhere to walk to, she complained, feeling for the first time a desire to escape her village, ignoring the enormous skies, seeing only a bucolic prison already developing fine layers of dust.’