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Title: Not quite the "Girl With The Pearl"...
Review: With eight short stories or perhaps vignettes, Ms. Vreeman traces an unknown Vermeer from its inception, to a locked room of a Professor with a dark family past. Central to that past is the manner his Father acquired the painting and the same past that so haunts the son. This book cannot escape comparison with "Girl With A Pearl Earring", and while it does not compare poorly, it certainly finishes second.Some of the eight stories are good, and some are very good, but they remain just that, pieces of eight, not a unified tale. I would have liked to have read this as a single work, one that was not broken apart, shuffled, and left for the reader to thread a non-sequential storyline together.I enjoyed the book, and the read is certainly worthwhile. It does not make great demands upon the reader, but unfortunately it does linger either.
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