The Tearoom Library, No. 008 — Piranesi

Author: Susanna Clarke
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: ★★★★★

Follow-Up Reading:

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
  (for a quiet, memory-soaked story where reality and the unseen blur)

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
  (for an expanded view of Clarke’s fascination with magic, knowledge, and perception)

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  (for a richly imagined, enclosed world, much like the quiet, immersive experience of Piranesi’s House)

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Books with Living Atmospheres

Piranesi is a unique novel. One mark of a good book is that it lingers in the minds and hearts of readers long after they have reached the final page. When I first read Piranesi a few years ago, I learned that—every once in a while—a book will come along that’ll swallow me entirely, whisking me off even in sleep.

Piranesi is well-known for its atmospheric nature. At times, it felt to me as if the real protagonist in the novel was the House, rather than Piranesi. Susanna Clarke took great care to paint with words a vast, mysterious, shadowy location. It is near the sea—so near, in fact, that when the tide is high, the ocean spills into these very halls, as if they were lovers meeting for a rendezvous.

The first time I read Piranesi, Clarke’s descriptions had been so carefully crafted that, when I crawled into bed, I felt as though I were wandering the House. For nearly a week afterwards, I dreamed that I was exploring cavernous halls with bizarre and noble statues. I can remember the shadows in those dreams: they played an important part in making it beautiful, making it true.

Few other books have captured me with their atmosphere in this way. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia came close this year, though I did not visit her more sinister house in my dreams. For this I can only be thankful, as the house in Moreno-Garcia’s novel isn’t a place I would like to find myself in sleep.

Caring for the Statues

Piranesi is a sympathetic character because he is devoted to the only purpose that he can find for himself. He tends to the halls of the great House, acquainting himself with the bizarre statues, befriending wild albatrosses, making the best of what he has—and what he does not have—until he is even happy in his isolation.

At the start of the novel, it’s clear that Piranesi is uncertain of how he arrived at the House and how long he’s been there. He recalls no other world. In place of human interaction, he befriends statues and creates histories for the people that they represent. He feeds the wild birds and even tends to the remains of other humans, people he has never met who found their way into the House at some point but couldn’t make it out.

When he senses there is going to be a high tide that might threaten the deceased, he moves them to places where they will not be disturbed by water. They do not talk back to him, but he treats them as though they were his friends. It is both touching and heartbreaking to read of the tenderness with which he does these things.

He has occasional interactions with one other human, a man that he calls the Other, for no other name has been given by which to address this man. The Other is obsessed with collecting hidden knowledge about the House, and he relies heavily on Piranesi’s knowledge to fulfill this goal.

However, the Other does not live in the House; it is Piranesi who wanders the halls alone, while the Other only visits occasionally.

Houses that are Protagonists

Novels like Piranesi and Mexican Gothic have a fascinating quality: the locations in which they take place become more than brick and mortar. The houses have personalities; a person who spends enough time inside of them would get to know them as if they were people, understanding their likes and dislikes.

Hogwarts, the school in the Harry Potter series, is another excellent example. The castle has not one, but several different personalities, not only because of ghosts that wander the corridors, but also the talking portraits and hidden passages.

A well-crafted character thrives when placed in a setting that seems to have its own beating heart. This could be due to layers of history, unpredictable weather, or the area surrounding it—are there haunted woods? Is there an ocean that intrudes at will, such as the one in Piranesi?

World-building should not be taken lightly when writing a story. If a world is created that’s vivid enough to creep into the reader’s dreams, one knows that their story has the potential to become a masterpiece. I have returned to many books because I wanted to experience again the world constructed inside of them.

World-building requires a good deal of attention and practice in order to achieve the realism I am describing. It means constructing backstory, not only for the characters, but for each brick and every window-pane. Telling a good story takes time and dedication.

When world-building, we want to approach the process like explorers who found a door by chance. We will open it and know nothing of what we’ll find inside. We must be just as enchanted by each nook and cranny as our readers are meant to be.

My Only Enemy, My Only Friend

Piranesi’s innocence—his gentle naivety throughout most of the novel—warm readers to him. Even as he begins to suspect that the Other is not, in fact, a friend, he cannot bring himself to hate him. Instead, he searches for explanations, quietly excusing what cannot easily be excused, because the alternative feels unbearable.

From Piranesi’s point of view, we begin to understand how easily the boundaries between friend and abuser can blur. He is being misled, contained within carefully constructed lies, yet lacks the language to name what is happening to him. The Other is, after all, the only human presence he has known for as long as he can remember. He gives gifts—shoes for walking, tools for mapping—and so even harm arrives dressed as care.

To accept that the Other has acted cruelly would mean accepting something devastating: that he’s never known kindness at all. And so, for the sake of coherence, he bends his thoughts around this contradiction, searching for grace where none is easily found.

When the Other finally meets his end, there is no sense of victory. Instead, there is grief—quiet, disorienting. Piranesi has lost his only enemy, and his only friend.

As with the other remains in the House, he tends to the Other’s body with care. He finds a sheltered place in the halls and lays it to rest with dignity. His instinct is still to care.

Only now, there is no longer any uncertainty about what he is caring for.

A Note from the Margins

Piranesi is not the sort of novel that merely entertains. It settles somewhere deeper—beneath thought, beneath language—and begins, quietly, to build. It creeps into one’s dreams, and lingers there, almost lovingly, among the statues and the albatross.

If I sit long enough with it, I can almost believe there are halls within my own mind, lined with statues of everything I have loved and feared. As a writer, I find myself tending to them, much as Piranesi tends to his House.

For members of the Tearoom Circle, I’ve opened my reading journal and copied a passage written just after I finished this book.

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Author: Allegra Goodman
Genre: Historical Fiction · Adventure · Romance
Rating: ★★★★★

Follow-Up Reading:

• Circe — Madeline Miller
  (for exile, solitude, and a woman remaking herself outside the world that rejects her)

• The Company Daughters — Samantha Rajaram
  (for colonial displacement, female agency, and the pressures of belonging)

• Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell
  (for grief, interior life, and the quiet endurance of women within history)

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The Book of the City of Ladies

In order to fully understand the power of Isola, one must return to a medieval work that has, in recent years, found renewed resonance as the world has begun to reconsider women’s voices in literature and history.

Written by Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies is a visionary allegorical work that reimagines history as a place where women’s voices, achievements, and moral strength are not dismissed or forgotten, but deliberately built into the foundations of a symbolic city. In this imagined space, de Pizan constructs a refuge where exemplary women from myth, scripture, and history are gathered and honored as part of a lasting intellectual and moral architecture.

At the heart of the work are three allegorical figures—Reason, Rectitude, and Justice—who guide de Pizan in her task of constructing this city and in challenging the inherited assumptions about women’s supposed inferiority. The result is both a defense and an act of creation: a text that argues for women’s worth while simultaneously building a world in which that worth is made visible and permanent.

De Pizan’s work was radical for its time and widely read among learned and powerful women, who found in it both validation and encouragement. Its emphasis on moral and intellectual agency offered an alternative framework for understanding women’s lives, one that continues to feel unexpectedly modern in its clarity and conviction. While I have not yet read it myself, I am fascinated by it, and plan to this year.

In Isola, the protagonist Marguerite has read The Book of the City of Ladies. It is one of her most cherished books from childhood, and its vision of resilience, moral strength, and inner architecture becomes quietly essential to her survival during the merciless trials that begin when she turns fifteen.

Cousin, Guardian, Tyrant

Marguerite, the protagonist of Isola, is an orphan whose story begins in France in 1531. Her mother dies in childbirth, and her father is killed in battle when she is only three years old. Of him, Marguerite reflects: “When I was three years old, he was killed fighting for the King at Pavia. Then I was rich, although I did not know it, and poor, although I did not know it.” She inherits a chateau in Périgord, complete with villagers, vineyards, and farmland, yet she is left without the family who might have given that inheritance meaning.

In the absence of close relatives, Marguerite is placed under the guardianship of a cousin she has never met—Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval. Known primarily for his connection to the French court, Roberval is a man of ambition and instability, who believes himself entitled to the comforts of Marguerite’s estate. Once appointed her guardian, he sells her property and prepares to embark on an expedition to New France, determined to secure fortune and status in the expanding colonial world.

Marguerite, now fifteen, is not left behind. Roberval insists she accompany him, along with her devoted nurse, Damienne, who refuses to abandon her charge despite her age. What should have been a transition into protected adulthood instead becomes a forced journey into uncertainty, displacement, and isolation.

As Marguerite enters this precarious world, Roberval’s authority begins to reveal a darker edge. What had been framed as guardianship gradually takes on the contours of possession. In this enclosed hierarchy of power, Marguerite’s limited choices become increasingly perilous, particularly as she forms a quiet attachment to Auguste, one of Roberval’s young assistants.

What follows is not only a story of survival, but of moral pressure and psychological endurance—where authority becomes coercion, and where a young woman must learn, quickly and painfully, how to preserve herself within a world determined to define her as property.

Songs, Ships, & Romance

I am deeply fascinated by tales of brave souls who sail into the great unknown, in both fiction and nonfiction.

Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea recounts the ordeal of a whaling crew shipwrecked and left to endure months of near-unimaginable hardship before rescue. I have also written about Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, one of the most famous accounts of survival in an uninhabited, hostile landscape.

Isola belongs to this tradition of survival narratives, but it turns that tradition inward in a darker and more unsettling way. Marguerite is not merely forced into an expedition—she is compelled into it under guardianship, in a state of constant psychological pressure. Roberval’s authority is unpredictable and punitive; he takes pleasure in unsettling her, in keeping her perpetually off balance, and in making even the smallest mistake feel consequential.

When Marguerite and Auguste quietly fall in love, finding in one another a refuge from Roberval’s cruelty, their bond becomes something far more dangerous in his eyes than mere romance. It becomes an affront to his control—a chance, as he sees it, to exercise absolute power over lives he considers his own to direct.

After a prolonged period of feigned ignorance, Roberval abruptly reveals his intent. Marguerite, Auguste, and Damienne are to be abandoned on a remote and desolate island, left with provisions and tools but no real means of escape. It is a place of extreme isolation, where winters are severe and survival is uncertain. What is framed as an act of provisioning is, in truth, a calculated act of exile.

Damienne, even in her old age, adapts with quiet practicality. She turns instinctively to the work of maintaining order—keeping house as best she can in a world that offers no real shelter. Her endurance is not dramatic, but steady, almost invisible.

What follows is Marguerite’s long transformation. She is no longer the privileged child who once expected to inherit a chateau, nor the frightened girl at the mercy of others’ decisions. Over time, through loss, labor, and endurance, she becomes something harder to define.

Isola is a novel of survival, love, and female rage. It is not an easy read; its darker passages lingered with me long after I set it down.

At its core, it is a story of metamorphosis—not into something delicate or decorative, but into something enduring and formidable: a creature adapted to survive what it was never meant to endure.

A Note from the Margin

What remains with me after reading Isola is not only its story, but its insistence on transformation under pressure—on what a person becomes when every structure meant to protect her is removed. It is a novel that asks the reader to sit with endurance in its most unsettling forms, and to consider how survival reshapes identity itself.

I needed the solace of my journal in which to sift through the chaotic emotions that Marguerite’s ordeal brought into my heart. For those who read on in the Tearoom Circle, I am sharing what I wrote there—thoughts still unarranged, but honest in their unrest.

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Author: Alexandre Dumas

Genre: Historical Fiction · Adventure · Romance

Rating: ★★★★★

Follow-Up Reading:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Tulipomania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by Mike Dash

Featured Image: The Tulip Folly (1882) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

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A Study in Obsession and Care

Human beings are, by nature, creators. Each individual is so full of beautiful or frightening emotion that it cannot help but take form. If this emotion is not expressed in some way, if it is allowed to collect in one’s heart and fester, there follows a listlessness that I consider worse than death.

In my previous Tearoom Library post, I wrote about Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. It is a fantastic work of historical fiction inspired by the famous painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. The visual arts, and painting, represent one way of releasing those emotions and harnessing human talent.

There are other ways of creating, though—ways that require us to go outside and stand in the sun, get soil caught under our fingernails, and breathe in fresh air. Gardening is another art form, one that requires a certain type of patience and connection with one’s plants.

This week’s featured book, The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas, does not have a painter as a protagonist. Rather, the main character, Cornelius van Baerle, is a florist, a “tulip-fancier.” Like Vermeer, he lives in 17th-century Holland. Like Vermeer, van Baerle is a solitary man who devotes himself to his trade.

This story takes place during the great tulip craze of that century, and van Baerle, an expert gardener and florist, is obsessed with creating a type of flower that has not been known to exist before.

Van Baerle wants to cultivate a tulip black as ink, profound as night. He would present it at a competition and win a fortune, as well as national acclaim. However, van Baerle is not the only tulip-fancier obsessed with this competition—and other, less honest men are willing to do whatever it might take to steal the flower and the grand prize.

Envy, Plagiarism, & Love

Next door to van Baerle lives an envious rival, Isaac Boxtel, who also wants to present the black tulip. He does not take interest for the sake of love; he cares little for the flower. He wants only the money, acclaim, and royal connections. Boxtel is not van Baerle’s only rival—he has been accused of treason by people in high circles.

This notoriety encourages Boxtel to destroy his neighbor’s life. He conspires against van Baerle, his conscience numbed by lust for glory, and sets a trap that ends with van Baerle being sent to prison. It will not be so easy for Boxtel to claim the fruits of van Baerle’s labor, however. Before his arrest, van Baerle takes his three bulbs for the black tulip, hiding them in his clothes.

His true love is the flower. He might lose his freedom unjustly, but he will not abandon the flower to the uncaring hands of a bitter neighbor. And in prison, those tulip bulbs are his only company; he speaks to them, cares for them, finds comfort in their existence, for even behind bars, not yet planted, they are full of life.

But he still yearns to grow a black tulip and present it to the society competition. He enlists the help of Rosa, the prison guard’s daughter. Illiterate but deeply sensitive, with a gentle heart, Rosa agrees to help van Baerle plant his bulbs, seeking adequate soil. He gives her one bulb to grow in her home, a bulb that she cares for as if it were a child.

As they secretly nurture the bulbs, hope is cultivated in the midst of his confinement. Rosa’s flower begins to grow; so does their bond. Cornelius, in their stolen moments alone, gives her what I consider to be one of the greatest gifts: he teaches her to read and write, so that she is no longer powerless.

As Cornelius falls for Rosa, it is evident that he is still obsessed with the tulip bulbs, caring for them in a way that she cannot compete with. Rosa learns to read, and her personal confidence grows in the process. When it becomes clear that he cares for the tulips as if they were ladies, she becomes jealous. Can their romance blossom like the tulip that they are nurturing?

When Tulips Were Gold

To understand the rich backdrop of this classic novel, one must know the historical circumstances in which it occurred. Only then can we understand why Cornelius is so fixated on a flower—and why Boxtel would betray his neighbor for that same glory.

The Dutch tulip craze—often called Tulip Mania—took place in the early 17th century during the Dutch Golden Age, when the Netherlands was a center of global trade and growing wealth. Tulips, originally imported from the Ottoman Empire, became a luxury status symbol among the Dutch elite, prized especially for rare varieties with striking color patterns caused by a mosaic virus.

As demand surged, bulbs began to be traded not just as flowers but as speculative assets. Contracts were bought and sold for future delivery of bulbs, sometimes changing hands many times before the flowers were even planted. Prices escalated dramatically, with some rare bulbs reportedly valued higher than houses or large estates.

By the winter of 1636–1637, the market had become highly unstable. Prices were driven less by the intrinsic value of tulips and more by speculation and the expectation that they could be resold at higher prices. In February 1637, confidence suddenly collapsed when buyers failed to show up at routine auctions, triggering a rapid drop in prices. Many investors were left holding contracts that were now nearly worthless.

Although the economic damage was more limited than later financial crashes, the episode has endured as one of the earliest recorded examples of a speculative bubble—illustrating how quickly markets can be swept up by hype, scarcity, and the human tendency to believe that rising prices will continue indefinitely.

A Note from the Margin

In the Tearoom, we often speak about what we are reading.

Part of our mission is to dig into beautiful books for gems: ideas that reside within us for the rest of our lives, quotes that offer comfort in the darkest moments. I’ve chosen to share some of the quotes I jotted in my journal with members of the Tearoom Circle.

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Author: Tracy Chevalier

Genre: Historical Fiction · Art History · Literary Fiction

Rating: ★★★★★

Follow-Up Reading:

• The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

• Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis

• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

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In the World of Vermeer

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a special novel. It is one of those dignified stories that attempt to tell the life of a famous painter by constructing a fictional backstory around them. I have seen several such novels about the lives of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, as well as Claude Monet. It is for good reason, however, that Tracy Chevalier’s novel has become a classic.

It was one of the first “adult” novels I picked up after moving past my Young Adult phase. Rather than making the choice myself, this book seemed to choose me. It was one of my grandmother’s favorite books, and she kept it nearby at all times, admiring the painting on the cover and even reproducing it in her own drawing style. I will talk more about this later in the post.

Johannes Vermeer’s paintings are known for being atmospheric. With only about thirty-four works decisively attributed to him, there are certainly other artists who produced more during their careers. Vermeer’s work took longer because he was meticulous about every detail. He produced only one or two paintings per year—hardly enough to maintain his growing family, a situation that is addressed in Chevalier’s novel.

It is no surprise, then, that Vermeer found himself in debt when he died. His complicated financial situation left his family nearly destitute after his death in 1675, at the age of forty-three. They were forced to sell their home and possessions to survive. His iconic paintings—vastly admired for their warm light and ability to make the ordinary beautiful—could not guarantee financial security.

This is not a fate unique to Vermeer. The arts and the creative life have been both the passion and the undoing of many talented painters and writers who had stories they were eager to tell and show the world, but not the money or patrons to support them. Vincent van Gogh, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Oscar Wilde all died in debt—or in severe financial hardship.

Griet, Making Art with the Mundane

In Girl with a Pearl Earring, the main character, Griet, is a sixteen-year-old girl living in seventeenth-century Delft. Born into a lower-class family, she is taught the basics of housekeeping—cleaning, laundry, and cooking. She might have been born into an ordinary life of mundane routines, but there is something different about her: she has a sight that other young women lack.

When Johannes Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, first visit Griet’s family home, they find her in the kitchen helping to prepare dinner. Specifically, she is arranging chopped vegetables on a plate, but not in a random manner. Vermeer notices what his wife does not: Griet places the tomatoes in one spot, the cauliflower in another, subconsciously preparing an edible work of art. He understands that she is not merely preparing food, but composing something pleasing to the eye.

The Vermeers have come to her home in search of extra help in their own grand household. Johannes, in particular, needs someone to clean his art studio—his sanctuary, which he does not allow even his own servants to enter. Even Catharina is forbidden from entering the studio, a fact that causes her great distress, for no woman wishes for a place in her own home to be off-limits.

Vermeer, impressed by Griet’s eye for color and arrangement, is convinced at once that she is suited for employment as caretaker in his studio. He believes he can trust her to treat his paintings and materials with care. Catharina does not see Griet as he does; to her, Griet is simply another lower-class girl who will join the household staff and become meddlesome in what is—and is not—her domain.

Griet is quickly hired and told she will move to the Vermeers’ home within a matter of days. She will carry little with her, but she bears great responsibility. Her father, having been blinded in a work accident, can no longer provide for the family; what she earns assisting Vermeer will ensure that her mother and sister have food on the table. So, in spite of her homesickness and trepidation, she courageously takes on this next chapter of her life.

The Painting and the Pearl

Tracy Chevalier wrote an entire novel surrounding Vermeer’s beloved piece, Girl with a Pearl Earring. Using the powerful character of Griet, she built a story behind the painting, spinning a tale to personify Vermeer’s model.

This is historical fiction, so we cannot assume that the model was indeed called Griet. I consider historical fiction beautiful for this very reason: it satisfies our curiosity without claiming to be concrete truth.

In reality, the magic of art is in the fact that we do not know who these models were, why they were chosen, and what took place during the hours, even months, when these beloved paintings were being composed. Girl with a Pearl Earring beautifully marries fact and fiction, satisfying our craving for story without heretically altering what is known about history.

We cannot deny that there may be truth in Chevalier’s story. The model in Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) is believed, by some, to have been a maid or model in his Delft household. It is not a traditional portrait but a tronie—a study of expression, character, and costume rather than a commissioned likeness.

Her identity will forever remain a mystery, because what defines the painting is not who she is, but how she is seen. The girl—this “Griet”—turns toward the viewer as if caught mid-moment, her lips slightly parted. The dark, undefined background removes any sense of setting, isolating her so that attention falls entirely on her face, headscarf, and the single luminous pearl.

Her expression remains ambiguous: neither fully open nor fully withdrawn, it creates a sense of suspended attention. This balance between intimacy and distance is what gives the painting its enduring power, making it feel less like a captured moment and more like an ongoing, silent encounter.

The Painter & the Maiden

Vermeer’s wife, Catharina, is doing all a good wife is expected to do—bearing children, hosting guests—but she is not allowed in her husband’s studio. He is bored of her; it is not clear if he was ever in love with her.

Vermeer seems out of place in his own house, very detached from his many children. His studio is his world. It is where he escapes, where he can make art, taking months and months to finish one project. He takes an interest in Griet, but it is the interest an artist would show in any one thing that fascinates him. He is not lusting for her. In this way, he is also detached. Griet does appear to feel some passion for him, as she enters her sixteenth year, ‘womanhood,’ in his house.

They do not engage in a physical affair, but mentally and emotionally there is a bond he does not have with his wife.

A Note from the Margin

What follows is taken directly from my diary:

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Author: Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Genre: Biography · American History · Women in History

Rating: ★★★★★

Follow-Up Reading:

• Mona Lisa in Camelot — Margaret Leslie Davis

• Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — Greg Lawrence

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Women Who Helped Shape America

In 2025, I spent the summer months reading books about American history. I ‘began at the beginning’—with the Revolutionary War—initiating a personal project that continues to this day.

Starting with George Washington, it is my goal to read about each U.S. president in chronological order so I can form a detailed picture of the country I love and her origins.

I soon discovered that it wasn’t enough to read only about the presidents. Their wives were remarkable as well, and just as committed to the Revolutionary cause, even if they could not hold public office or join the Army.

We do our history a disservice by not talking about the presidents’ wives. Abigail Adams did secretarial work for her husband when he was president; we will never know how her opinions influenced his letters.

And, of course, we all know the story of Dolley Madison saving George Washington’s portrait when the president’s house was set on fire.

When the Timeline Loosened

I soon discovered that, for a project as vast and important as this, I would have to occasionally forsake chronological order—otherwise, overlapping details become cumbersome, and I find myself wanting to put the book down.

I am currently working through a biography of Andrew Jackson, but have allowed myself to skip ahead. I’ve gone on to read about John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt.

In the American History category, the biographical book I’ve most enjoyed this year is Carl Sfarrazza Anthony’s Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy. In February, I had explored the sophisticated mind of Jacqueline Kennedy through Mona Lisa in Camelot by Margaret Leslie Davis (I will share my thoughts on this book soon).

Camera Girl tells us of the early years of Jacqueline Bouvier. As a girl, she already had a sharp mind, immersing herself in literature and history. She was born to be a leader, managing self-education without forsaking qualities that made her socially at ease—the ability to connect, observe, and relate to others.

France, and What It Gave Her

Sferrazza Anthony unveils Jackie’s year spent abroad when she was a college student.

Though she traveled throughout Europe, she spent a good deal of that time in France. There, she mastered the French language and immersed herself in the world of art so that later, as First Lady, she was gripped by a daring idea.

What was this idea? Convincing the French government to lend the United States one of their most beloved works, La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci. The lady with the mysterious smile would live in Washington, D.C., and then in New York, gracing American soil for about three months.

Because of her adventures as a young woman—and her persuasive nature—Jackie was uniquely positioned to accomplish this.

The Camera She Chose

Camera Girl is a delightful chronicle of how this formidable First Lady came to be. It presents a young girl with sharp focus, broad interests, and the drive to push any project through to success—regardless of its cost.

It shows us how she went from precocious schoolgirl to European traveler to renowned journalist.

In the first chapter, Sferrazza Anthony uses a beautiful device to personify Jackie’s determination. Before leaving for France, she’d asked her parents for a specific birthday present: a camera. Specifically, a Leica, which at the time was top-of-the-line and very expensive.

By means of persistence, Jackie acquired the camera in time for her trip. It foreshadowed her journalistic career. After college, she went on to write for the Times-Herald. She wrote a popular column called Inquiring Camera Girl, right up until the time she married an intriguing young Massachusetts senator. Her interactions with ordinary people on the streets—asking thoughtful, practical questions—made her name well known in Washington, D.C.

Before she became First Lady, Jackie was already skilled at speaking with, and connecting to, ordinary people. The newspaper to which she contributed would cover her wedding as though it were a royal event.

But the topic of her marriage is one for another post.

Before the World Knew Her

In this chronicle of Jackie Bouvier’s coming of age, I found once more that a president’s wife can be just as—if not more—interesting than him. She was high-aspiring, deeply studious, and knew the right questions to ask. She was a trendsetter, storyteller, and fierce dreamer.

Camera Girl is the story of a young woman who knew she wanted to do something meaningful. She wanted to make history. She had the privilege of a good education, but even the best education does not create such a strong will if the person learning is not committed.

She focused on her work, her passions, and her studies, even as her ‘proper’ mother urged her to be conventional and find a suitable husband. Many of the things Jackie Bouvier did and said are touched with early feminism.

While we all know that she did marry, she was not uninvolved in JFK’s work.

A Reader in the Making

Jackie Bouvier struck a personal chord with me because of her love for books.

She kept a reading journal, much like I do. She was a lover of poetry and read across a broad range of topics and genres. She inspires women like me: we can, and should, educate ourselves through reading. We can learn so much about the world through a trusted book.

Camera Girl is a beautiful tribute to a woman who would prove her strength after her life—and family—were struck by tragedy. After that horrific loss, she did not crumble. She went on to become an editor at a publishing house, dedicating her life to books—which is, after all, what she originally wanted to do.

This woman was more than a president’s wife, more than a First Lady. She was a storyteller, a keeper of stories, a maker and chronicler of history.

Sferrazza Anthony’s book, Camera Girl, would be a lovely gift for a young woman starting her career. It’s a delightful read for anyone interested in the story of the Kennedys and Camelot.

It will satisfy anyone who has wondered what Jackie was like before she met Jack.

A Note from the Margin

It would be easy to say that Jackie Bouvier and I have nothing in common—but that would not be entirely true.

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