Who is the miniaturist? Is she a spy, or a prophetess, as Petronella Brandt would like to believe?

Upon reading the synopsis, it is easy to imagine the book is about a myriad of things but are they red herrings meant to muddy the waters? There are many facts in the novel: Burton was inspired by visits to Amsterdam and a real woman called Petronella Brandt who’s cabinet of miniatures, presented by her husband, is exhibited in the Rijksmuseum. However the story that Burton builds around these historical characters is one of fiction. Therefore, can the reader trust Burton’s authorial voice, much in the same way that we question Nella’s sanity, Marin’s motivations eccetera? For the reader, the jolt between reality and fiction is unsettling much like the deliberate remoteness of the miniaturist from the reader in the world that Burton creates.

The cabinet of miniature curiosities, meant as an affectionate present from husband to wife, as a distraction from evenings spent alone in her husband’s absence – is a ploy to keep Nella off the scent of what her newly betrothed is actually doing. The house is at once a symbol of marriage, of Nella and Johanne’s shared world but also a reminder that, in this world, Petronella is merely a child represented in this toy house where she can play at being mistress when, in reality, other forces are in charge of her. Nothing is what it seems.

The mysterious figure of the miniaturist is what arrests the reader’s attention. The reader obtains fleeting glimpses of the miniaturist in the book. She has an ethereal presence about her, one minute Nella sees her and the next she has vanished, she has white blonde hair and a hard gaze that appears to see into Nella’s soul. There is definitely an air of The Woman In White about her. To the end, the miniaturist’s motivations remain elusive.

What does this say about the novel? This is, again, deliberate toying, by Burton, with the reader’s expectations. We assume, because we know little about her, as we chase the miniaturist through the book with a racing pulse, that she must be a threat. However, she is more important as a device, opposed to a character in herself, to return control of Petronella’s destiny to Nella herself.

This is what the book does most brilliantly. Aside from Burton’s confident mastery of her prose, the visual cinematic quality of the scenes she paints in the reader’s mind, it is the way that she seeks to unpick the complexity and portray the fragility of the human condition, psychology itself, in such mesmorising detail. We are not chasing the miniaturist in this book, there is much more at stake than a piece of historical fiction, we are getting under our own skins.

Burton calls the reader’s mind to action from the first page – you cannot read this book passively, you have to devour it.

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