Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  One instance of derogatory language toward Jews (dirty-ass Jewboy).

Violence:  A Nazi officer kicks a small Jewish boy. A Jewish girl must kill her family’s pigeons (which are illegal to keep) by twisting their necks. A young woman is hanged for suspicion of witchcraft and smothering her infant daughter. A pregnant woman is beaten with a stick by her unstable brother and loses her baby; her husband strikes the brother on the head with a pitcher, punches him in the stomach, kicks him, and ties him up.

Sexual Content:  A man and a woman not married to each other discuss a musical piece with sexual innuendo (“crescendo”, “vibrato”, etc.); then later act it out, using the same terminology. The woman later catches her husband committing adultery. A young man is stirred by seeing a girl’s bare legs up to the thighs while wading in water. He kisses her between the breasts; they make love (some brief but vivid description) and she becomes pregnant out of wedlock.

Adult Themes:  Men drink alcohol together. Nazi officers callously round up Jewish families for deportation. They steal artwork and other valuables from the Jews’ homes. A man in 18th c. Holland works in the slave trade and gets rich from the sale of human beings. Some physical abuse. Some adultery (as mentioned above in sexual content).

Synopsis

Girl in Hyacinth Blue is the title given to a fictitious work of art by the real-life painter Jan Vermeer, a 17th century Dutch master who painted exquisite scenes of domestic middle-class life. He is lauded for his mastery of capturing light reflecting off his subjects’ faces. Though not as prolific as other artists, his works are considered masterpieces, thus in the beginning of this novel when a reclusive math professor confides to a colleague that he possesses an unknown Vermeer, the news is literally incredible. The painting is of a young girl, wearing Vermeer’s trademark hyacinth blue, gazing out a window wistfully while her sewing sits unattended in her lap. The story of this painting then unfolds backwards in time from present day to Vermeer himself, through the eyes of eight different people, each with a relationship to the painting and a meaningful tale to tell.

I wish there were more novels like this one that make us contemplate beauty, or family, or little things in our daily lives we tend to overlook. On the surface, one might wonder how fascinating can the story of a painting really be? How important can a piece of artwork be to any of us, really? It just hangs on a wall. And yet, Vreeland lets us into the lives of each of her characters so intricately drawn that we, like they, become enraptured with this Girl in Hyacinth Blue, a painting which never even existed. In the author’s own words: To feel the grace of God in a painting of the dear, quiet commonness of a domestic interior, or in a landscape, seascape, cityscape, trains us to feel the grace of God in the thing itself in situ. Does the world need another painting of people quietly going about their lives? Does it need another story? Another poem? Yes. We as a people are generally rushing headlong through the decades of our lives without reflection. We keep an unwholesome pace. We don’t stop to glory in the sheen of rainwater on a stone or on a child’s cheek. If a story or a painting or a poem can urge us toward more contemplative living, then, yes. . . then yes, it is worth it. (Recommended for the upper high school ages.)