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BOOKS INTERVIEW: TRACY CHEVALIER - World of interiors

Independent, The (London), Sep 13, 2003 by Jane Jakeman

TRACY CHEVALIER'S novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, the story of a Dutch servant girl in the household of the artist Jan Vermeer, has a rare quality. Readers feel a personal relationship to it, a sense of private discovery which makes it one of the best-loved books on the shelf. Now it has received the ultimate historical accolade: a film starring Colin Firth. Chevalier has seen a preview, and thoroughly approves.

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Chevalier followed Girl with a Pearl Earring with Falling Angels, which had less strong visual content and more social history, focusing on two elaborate tombs in a Victorian cemetery, where the members of a progressive and slightly bohemian family are interred next to those of a rigidly conventional household still locked in the past. The story is a multiple narrative told through 12 voices, mainly those of the women. Her new book The Lady and the Unicorn moves back again to the art world, embracing not only the enclosed world of the artist but social and practical aspects of craft production. But it was Girl, a demotic fictional history which gave life to the humblest of servants, that brought her initial literary recognition and popular success.

That novel was a true "word-of-mouth" bestseller, recommended by one reader to another until it worked its way up to become a hot and buzzing title. PR skills in the book trade can ensure so much orchestration that an apparently "unpromoted" book is thrust before the public at every turn, so the author of a really spontaneous success is a rare bird. "It's the best kind of success to have," says Chevalier, "a very genuine response to a book, not led by marketing or advertising. I love that." But how did she adjust from being a modest graduate of the creative-writing MA course at the University of East Anglia to international fame in fiction?

"It took a long time to realise that it was a success. I was able to take that on board, it gave me the chance to acclimatise to it a bit. Also it's a genuine love for the book - not much to do with me - which means I can retain some privacy."

Tracy Chevalier has certainly defied part of the usual book-sales hype, whereby the author has to become a self-promoting celebrity. She still lives quietly in north London, where she arrived as a young American almost 18 years ago. After completing the course at East Anglia, where Rose Tremain and Malcolm Bradbury were among her teachers, she remained in Britain, married an Englishman, and now has a young son at school here. "He has an English accent and often corrects my accent. In the bath he plays submarines and Thunderbirds and he'll put on an American accent."

For someone with an intense visual awareness, she claims not to be particularly artistic, but she must have a good eye. Her father was a photographer and her house is full of discreet works of art. They are modern in taste, though for many readers Chevalier's greatest virtue is her skill at recreating the past. Indeed, the success of Girl with a Pearl Earring was probably one of the leading factors in re- establishing the historical novel, which the conventional wisdom of publishing had almost abandoned. Why has there been this revival of a neglected genre? I asked her if she thought it was escapism.

"We escape in other ways - with action films and ChickLit. I'm surprised that I'm writing historical fiction because I'm not a historian by nature - though I like escaping into the past because I can leave my contemporary life behind. It's very easy to leave what my own world is doing behind.

"I think maybe people are looking for something more from books. Maybe reading historical novels gives you something to learn as well. A lot of people, especially men, write to me and say, "I don't usually read novels but my wife told me to read Girl with a Pearl Earring and to my great surprise I really liked it because I learned a lot about Dutch society and how to paint.'"

Is she repelled by the modern world? "Sometimes, yes. Having said that, until relatively recently people led very hard lives and I appreciate the fact that I don't. When I had my son there were some complications and I had to have a Caesarean. I could easily have died, if it had been 100 years ago. As it was, everything was fine. So I don't necessarily want to escape the modern world, though there are a lot of things about it I find very frustrating and a bit scary.

"I do feel it's accelerating so fast that I can't figure out what's going to happen to us. My son is at that age where he's asking a lot about infinity and God, and he keeps asking about the end of the world. He asked, `Mummy, when is the world going to end. It can't go on for ever, can it?' I said, `I don't know, it's a question I can't answer,' and thought to myself, `There's something in me that feels that the world can't go on, and eventually something is going to give, because we're using up everything.' So that part of the modern world does make me feel very sad and I think it's a lot easier to look back."

BOOKS INTERVIEW: TRACY CHEVALIER - World of interiors

Independent, The (London), Sep 13, 2003 by Jane Jakeman

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