The Lady and the Unicorn - Softcover

Tracy Chevalier

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452285283 ISBN 13: 9780452285286

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

In her fourth novel (after Virgin Blue, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Falling Angels ), Tracy Chevalier returns to her most successful format, spinning a lush, rich back story behind a famous masterpiece about which little is known. While it compares favorably with her acclaimed masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, this beautifully imagined and boldly told novel stands proudly on its own merits. Chevalier's greatest strengths as a writer come from her keen ability to re-create a time and place, in this case 15th-century France and Belgium. She interweaves narratives of the painter who conceived the six famous images, the tapissier who weaved them onto cloth, and the women in both artists' lives to create a magnificent historical novel that brings to life the enigmatic ladies of the tapestries, imagining their identities and circumstances, as well as the meaning of the tapestries about which little is actually known. This is rich territory for a writer to mine, and Chevalier shows all the impressive strengths of her previous novels. Wonderfully written, freshly conceived, and rich in the details of medieval life, The Lady and the Unicorn is another literary gem from one of our most successful and imaginative writers of historical fiction.

About this title

Review

If you think you wouldn't raise your skirts for a rakish legend about the purifying powers of a unicorn's horn, then maybe you aren't a 15th-century serving girl under the sway of a velvet-tongued court painter of ill repute. In keeping with her bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring, and its Edwardian-era follow-up, Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier's tale of artistic creation and late-medieval amours, The Lady and the Unicorn is a subtle study in social power, and the conflicts between love and duty. Nicolas des Innocents has been commissioned by the Parisian nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a series of large tapestries for his great hall (in real life, the famous Lady and the Unicorn cycle, now in Paris's Musee National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny). While Nicolas is measuring the walls, he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be Jean Le Viste's daughter. Their passion is impossible for their world--so forbidden, given their class differences, that its only avenue of expression turns out to be those magnificent tapestries. The historical evidence on which this story is based is slight enough to allow the full play of Chevalier's imagination in this cleverly woven tale. --Regina Marler

About the Author

Tracy Chevalier is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Virgin Blue, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Falling Angels. An American originally from Washington, D.C., she lives in London, England, with her husband and son.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452285283
• ISBN 13: 9780452285286
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288