![]() ![]() The real puzzle is Johannes’s relationship with his forbidding sister Marin, who manages his home and participates in his business affairs with an authority rarely ceded to women of that era. Readers more sophisticated than a 17th-century Dutch teenager will discern the reason for Johannes’s lack of physical interest in Nella long before she stumbles across his secret. Her new husband is handsome and intelligent, and though Nella is baffled by his rueful disquisitions on the hypocrisies of Amsterdam society and the limits of love, she appreciates being treated with respect - at first. He’s two decades her senior, and she barely knows him, but in the wake of her father’s debt-ridden death, “What other option was there. Burton evokes the sights, sounds and smells of 17th-century Amsterdam as she brings to life a cast of sensitively rendered characters, each longing to be free.Īs the story begins in 1686, 18-year-old Nella has just married wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. ![]() ![]() Jessie Burton’s accomplished first novel is many things - a deftly plotted mystery, a feminist coming-of-age drama and a probing investigation of marriage. ![]()
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