I was able to finish a book this week, to make up for my lack of reading during the Olympics (see the entry below). I have always admired books that take a real life subject, and intertwine it with fiction so well that it is hard to tell what is truth and what is fiction (Dan Brown is a great example of a writer that can do this beautifully). I think that this may be why I liked "I Am Rembrandt's Daughter" so much. Lynn Cullen writes the tale of what life would have been like for the illegitimate child of the painter Rembrandt van Rijn. One of my favorite books of all time is "The Girl With a Pearl Earring" and this book has many of the same qualities, well written characters, romance, emotional termoil, suspence, all set against a backdrop of great works of art. I would encourage all of you interested in well written, realistic fiction to check it out.
From the book:
With her mother dead of the plague and her brother newly married, Cornelia van Rijn finds herself without a friend or confidante—except her difficult father. Out of favor with Amsterdam’s elite, the once revered Rembrandt van Rijn is now teetering on the brink of madness. Cornelia alone must care for him, though she is haunted by secrets and scandal of her own. Her only happiness comes in a growing romance with Carel, the son of a wealthy shipping magnate, whose passion for art stirs her. And then there is Neel, her father’s last remaining pupil, a darkly brooding young man whose steadfast devotion to Rembrandt both baffles and touches her.
Based on real characters and filled with family dramas and a love triangle that would make Jane Austen proud, I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter is a powerful account of a young woman’s struggle to come of age within the shadow of one of the world’s most brilliant and complicated artists.
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