The Lady and the Unicorn. - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452285283 ISBN 13: 9780452285286

Publisher: Plume Books, 2005

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes a historical tale of love, sex and revenge.

Keen to demonstrate his new-found favour with the King, rising nobleman Jean Le Viste commissions six tapestries to adorn the walls of his château. He expects soldiers and bloody battlefields. But artist Nicolas des Innocents instead designs a seductive world of women, unicorns and flowers, using as his muses Le Viste’s wife Geneviève and ripe young daughter Claude. In Belgium, as his designs spring to life
under the weavers’ fingers, Nicolas is inspired once more – by the master weaver’s daughter Aliénor and her mother Christine. They too will be captured in his threads.

About this title

Review

If you think you wouldn't raise your skirts for a rakish legend about the purifying powers of a unicorn's horn, then maybe you aren't a 15th-century serving girl under the sway of a velvet-tongued court painter of ill repute. In keeping with her bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring, and its Edwardian-era follow-up, Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier's tale of artistic creation and late-medieval amours, The Lady and the Unicorn is a subtle study in social power and the conflicts between love and duty. Nicolas des Innocents has been commissioned by the Parisian nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a series of large tapestries for his great hall (in real life, the famous Lady and the Unicorn cycle, now in Paris's Musee National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny). While Nicolas is measuring the walls, he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be Jean Le Viste's daughter. Their passion is impossible for their world--so forbidden, given their class differences, that its only avenue of expression turns out to be those magnificent tapestries. The historical evidence on which this story is based is slight enough to allow the full play of Chevalier's imagination in this cleverly woven tale. --Regina Marler, Amazon.com

Review

‘Beautifully written, I could not put it down... a tale of ambition, lust, betrayal and heartbreak...a compelling and enormously enjoyable work' Evening Standard

‘On the academic front, here is the old Chevalier, exact and guarded, accurate and self-contained...On the erotic front, she positively explodes, the shy smiles of Pearl Earring replaced by a terrific torrent of carnal imagery, every sense invoked and appetite exploited’ Guardian

'Tracy Chevalier gives the kiss of life to the historical novel' Independent

‘With great insight, invention and a remarkable eye for detail, Chevalier breathes life into artists and artisans, their subjects and surroundings and, most important, their magnificent creations’ Washington Post

‘The story she weaves is as lush as the tapestries she describes, and her colorful characters leap off the page. A romantic, beautiful book’ Booklist

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0452285283
• ISBN 13: 9780452285286
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288