Product Description

The wonderful new novel from the much loved author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries. Beautiful, intricate and expertly made, they are also mysterious in their origin and meaning. Tapestries give an appearance of order and continuity, as if designed and made by one person, belying the complicated process required to create them. Weavers, patrons, designers, artists, merchants and apprentices were involved in their making, and behind them were the wives, daughters and servants who exercised influences over their men. Like the many strands of wool and silk woven together into one cloth, so these people came together in a complex dance to create the whole picture. Jean le Viste, a newly wealthy member of the French court, commissions the tapestries to hang in his chateau. Nicolas, his chosen designer, meets le Viste's wife Genevieve and his daughter Claude, both of whom take a keen interest in the tapestries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50357 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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
'A beautifully written tale, I could not put it down...an exquisite, moving and convincing story, drawing realistic and rounded characters who each tell their aspect of the tale. The theme of the five senses is woven into the plot so cleverly that our perception of the novel is sharpened...This is not just a novel about the creation of a work of art, but a tale of ambition, lust, betrayal and heartbreak...a compelling and enormously enjoyable work.' Evening Standard'The Lady and the Unicorn will perhaps eclipse Pearl Earring.' Guardian

Daily Mail
'Her helter-skelter dialogue has a lot of charm and wit'.

Customer Reviews

The Author has woven a beautiful tapestry of her own.
I read this novel on my vacation in Paris and on the day I finished it I went to the Cluny Museum to see the Tapestries for myself. I'd seen them ten years ago, but seeing them again, after reading Tracy's book brought them to life in a way that was utterly magical.

As she did with The Girl With the Pearl Earring, (but even better this time since she has matured as a writer) the author takes a classic work of art and artfully spins a tale inspired by the original which becomes an original itself.

That the actual art work exists adds to the magic. The magic adds to the actual art work.

Tracy's imagination, her grasp of history, her attention to the senses, to details, to the soul of both artists artisans and lovers are all as lovely and artful as the tapestries,

Not a stich is missing, not a word is extraneous or misplaced. Bravo.

Effortless storytelling, thrilling read
Looks like Tracy Chevalier's done it again.

This is the story of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the Cluny museum in Paris. Like in Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier has chosen a real work of art about which rather little is actually known, and woven a tale about what might have been the circumstances under which it was commissioned and created.
In Lady and the Unicorn, we enter into the world of 15th century Paris and Brussels but this is no boring history lesson. This story is full of jealousy and intrigue, passion and sex even. I'll certainly never look at blue tapestries in the same way - I could practically smell the reeking woad-dyer.
For me, this book is as successful as Girl With a Pearl Earring and more deftly told than Falling Angels. The voices are clearer and frankly, it's a happier read. I also found it more coherent than The Virgin Blue because it's all set in the same period and doesn't dot around between its historical setting and the modern day.

This really is a brilliant piece of writing. Recommended.

Ladies, unicorns and a leacherous tapestry designer!
Tracy Chevalier is a brilliant storyteller. In The Lady and the Unicorn, just as in Girl with a Pearl Earing, she uses a real work of art as the basis for a fictional story. We are presented with the contrasting home life of a family of tapestry weavers (poor but cheerful and busy) and the Le Vistes in their castle (wealthy but depressed and tedious). You might think the plot sounds fairly twee and predictable, but in fact the story is absorbing. Nicolas is a rogue but I liked him anyway, if only for bringing excitement, repressed though it may be in some cases, into the lives of the women. The oppression of the richer women was striking.

Chevalier's powers of description are superb - she makes it possible for her reader to step back in time. Although the book is set in medieval times, the historical detail is not too overwhelming. The story unfolds at a gentle pace, making it a relaxing read.