Tulip Fever
Deborah Moggach
The story is set in The Netherlands during the time of the tulip fever the title makes reference to. It narrates the story of Sophia, the young wife of Cornelis an ageing merchant, and her passionate affair with the painter Jan Van Loos.
At the beggining of the novel, Sophia and Cornelis are having lunch when Cornelis proposes her to have a painting done to outlive their own mortal lives. The painter arrives some days later and since they set eyes on each other, Sophia and Jan become in love.
A subplot is the story of Maria, Sophia's servant, and Willem, the fishseller. She is a simple girl from the countryside who, despite being uneducated, has some practical sense that make her more capable of dealing with every day problems than Sophia is.
Sophia and the painter starts meeting in his studio and she feels the thrills of having to run through the streets of Amsterdam trying not to be found.
I didn't fall. I flew! I have been given the airy immunity of an angel.
Soon they are planning how to get together for ever. However, Cornelis is a powerful man and they know that he can find them wherever they go.
When Maria gets pregnant and Willem disappears, Sophia feels she has the opportunity to escape the prison her life with Cornelis has become.
With a narration full of references to the beautiful paintings of that time, the book discusses the immortality of art and how it simply represents what the painter sees of the world, not the truth itself.
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