Time, 17 January 2000 — R.Z. Sheppard
"Chevalier is especially adept at character studies: imperious burghers, butchers, biddies and crones. It's as if, after scrutinizing Vermeer's masterworks (and doing the required reading), she began to think and feel like a 17th century Delfter."

New Yorker, January 2000
"...Chevalier's writing skill and her knowledge of seventeenth-century Delft are such that she creates a world reminiscent of a Vermeer interior: suspended in a particular moment, it transcends its time and place."

Wall Street Journal, January 2000
"Ms. Chevalier doesn't put a foot wrong in this triumphant work, the latest of several recent novels based on Vermeer paintings. It is a beautifully written tale that mirrors the elegance of the painting that inspired it."

salon.com, 9 January 2000 — Marion Lignana Rosenberg
"A wondrous, enthralling piece of work. Chevalier's novel sings with the freshness and the thoroughly intoxicating sense of a specific time, place and personality."

USA Today, 6 January 2000 — Denise Kersten
"Chevalier's imagination adds life to an already brilliant painting in this elegantly developed and beautifully written novel."

San Francisco Chronicle, 2 January 2000 — Andrew Roe
"Fittingly, Chevalier's writing style adopts a painterly approach: The elegant prose evokes contemplation, the pace is slow and cumulative, the drama emotional rather than visceral."

Publishers Weekly, 11 October 1999
"... This is a completely absorbing story with enough historical authenticity and artistic intuition to mark Chevalier as a talented newcomer to the literary scene." Read entire review

Guardian, 7 August 1999 — Deborah Moggach
"...This is a wonderful novel, mysterious, steeped in atmosphere and yet firmly rooted in the drudgery and denial of a servant's life. It is deeply revealing about the process of painting and is best read with a volume of Vermeer's paintings open beside you - it then becomes a truly magical experience."  Read entire review

 
Time Out, 8-15 September 1999 — Brian Case
"... She has wonderfully evoked the Delft of the mid-seventeenth century Netherlands, its canals, markets and churches, the endless, uncomplaining drudgery of a domestic servant's life which accompanied Griet's brief time in the sun. The novel is as subtly haunting as the best of Eric Rohmer's films. " Read entire review

Times (London), 18 September 1999 — Rachel Campbell-Johnson
"...Second novels are reputedly the true test of writers, the chance to show that their talents rest on more than luck or hype. Girl With a Pearl Earring more than fulfils such expectations. This is a novel which deserves, and I am sure will win, a prize - or two. " Read entire review

Ham and High (London), 24 September 1999 — Judy Cooke
"...The term 'historical novel' doesn't really do justice to Chevalier. Her reconstruction of the period is meticulous but that is only part of the book's appeal. Her central subjects, the nature of love, the significance of art, are treated with a touch that is light and knowing and wholly contemporary." Read entire review

The Herald (Scotland), 2 October 1999 — Cate Devine
"...Little is actually known about Vermeer, but Tracy Chevalier's skill in putting together a plausible narrative from scant detail is impressive. Fanciful and offbeat, yet utterly convincing, it manages to bring to life an era in which innocence and protocol are paramount, and a town in which gossip, jealousy and spite are as endemic as the fetching of water from the canal and the buying of meat from the market." Read entire review