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- General fiction - |
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Tulip Fever |
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 Tulip Fever byDeborah Moggach Delacorte Press 272 pages, 2000 ISBN: 0385334893 Reviewed by Zaheera Jiwaji Deborah Moggach's tidy little book Tulip Fever reveals the Holland of 1636, at the height of its power. Cornelis Sandvoort, hard-working, pious, proud and loyal, announces to his wife, his desire to feel a sense of immortality. His beautiful, much-younger wife, Sophia winces, fears yet another discussion on their still-childless state. But, she is wrong. Cornelis is, as many of Amsterdam's wealthy middle-class, proposing that they have their portrait painted. The painter, Jan Van Loos arrives, and falls in love with Sophia as she sits in her Delft blue silk gown. Sophia is no less smitten, and so begins an affair between the young beauty and the handsome artist. A parallel entanglement ensues in the kitchen with Maria, the servant, and Willem, the fishmonger. Moggach tells this tale of love and greed, in short, succinct chapters, illustrated with reproductions of seventeenth-century Northern European paintings and with epigraphs from essays and literature of the period. The paintings, almost eerily, reflect the twists and turns of the Sandvoort household. Meanwhile, integral to the plot, is the tulipomania, which has overtaken Amsterdam. Men make and lose fortunes overnight on the speculation in bulbs - it is a fever, a madness. And Sophia, Cornelis, Jan and the other colourful characters are fully in its grip. This is above all a morality tale; charmingly told, almost musical in the way in which it builds to a lusty crescendo. Moggach is clearly a great talent. |
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