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: #73931 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.

A Bawdy Tale of Artistic Creation and Procreation
The Lady and the Unicorn reminded me of the bawdy stories in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales translated into a novel about the creation of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. With each chapter the narrator shifts so you get a better sense of each character's personality and history.

The book has two remarkable strengths that were not sustained throughout. First, the book opens with constant surprises. Each chapter quickly takes you off in a new direction that makes the book's development a delight. Second, you receive a nice briefing on how tapestries were conceived, commissioned, designed and executed. If the book had continued its focus on these elements, this would have been a remarkably good book. But, alas, the story bogged down into too much detail about the fictional lives of the tapestry makers and the commissioner's family. Those shifts turned an intriguing book into a soap-opera like story line. Ultimately, the book resolves its tensions in ways that few will find pleasing or very interesting. So you go from a five star opening to about a two star ending. But the beginning is so brilliant that you should read the book. For happiest reading, you can stop after page 126.

Every good novel has at least one arresting character. In The Lady and the Unicorn that character is Alienor de la Chapelle. I won't say more because you should read about her to form your own opinions. But do be on the lookout when she appears in the book.

Nicolas des Innocents, the artist, on the other hand is a pig. I would have enjoyed the story more if he had been a spiritually uplifted character rather than a roué.

Find beauty all around you!