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TULIP FEVER (Vintage £6.99)
This novel was written in a rush of emotion; it’s
really my love-letter to Dutch painting and that lost world
of serene and dreamy domestic interiors. I hadn’t written
a historical novel before, and found the whole process extraordinary.
It happened like this: I had bought, at auction, a painting
by a minor Dutch artist. Dated 1660, it depicted a young woman
getting ready to go out. She gazes at us with an enigmatic
expression, and, as I gazed back I wondered: where is she
going? Should she be going there?She hung in my living room,
silent with her secrets.
 Here
she is.
Some months later, in 1998, I was asked to give a talk about
adapting books into films. The venue was the Empire Cinema,
Leicester Square. This was where I had been sitting next to
my partner, the cartoonist Mel Calman, when he died of a heart
attack some years earlier. So giving a talk there was rather
traumatic. When I was asked what film I would really like
to make I replied, without hesitation: “I’d walk
into a Vermeer painting.” So the idea was born, in that
dark cinema with its terrible memories.
I went away and swam in the ponds on Hampstead Heath,
which helps me think of ideas, and worked out a plot based
on a love affair between a painter and his sitter. In researching
it, I discovered the tulip mania that had gripped the Dutch
during the 1630s and thought this a wonderful symbol of human
greed and passion. So the story was born. I sat down, surrounded
myself with books of paintings and wrote it in a rush. It
was a very thrilling time. I was living with a young Hungarian
painter during that period and he built a three-dimensional
Dutch interior around me – fireplaces, panelling –
as I lay on the floor writing (he was doing up my house),
and lit the rooms with candles.
This is a passage from the book that describes what
I love about Dutch paintings of the 17th century.
“And hanging in a thousand homes, paintings
mirror back the lives that are lived there. A woman plays
the virginal; she catches the eye of the man beside her.
A handsome young soldier lifts a glass to his lips; his
reflection shines in the silver-topped decanter. A maid
gives her mistress a letter…the mirrored moments are
stilled, suspended in aspic. For centuries to come people
will gaze at these paintings and wonder what is about to
happen. That letter, what does it say to the woman who stands
at the window, the sunlight streaming onto her face. Is
she in love? Will she throw away the letter or will she
obey it, waiting until the house is empty and stealing out
through the rooms that recede, bathed in shafts of sunshine,
at the back of the painting?
“Who can tell? For her face is serene, her secrets
locked into her heart. She stands there, trapped in her
frame, poised at a moment of truth. She has yet to make
her decision.”
Before the book was even published Steven Spielberg
phoned from his car, in LA, saying he wanted to film it. Many
plot twists followed this, as they do with such things, but
it is now due to be filmed in spring 2004, starring Jude Law
as the young painter, Keira Knightley as Sophia and Jim Broadbent
as her husband. See the newsletter for further developments.
A novel of art and illusion, doomed love and a tulip bulb…
Amsterdam in the 1630s: considered by its inhabitants to be
the wealthiest city in the world. For do they not possess
the richness of art, literature, music and the refinement
of society, in addition to commercial wealth? The painters
of the time are busy; the city’s inhabitants intend
to guarantee their immortality with gold. Sitting for such
a portrait is Sophia Sandvoort, beside her elderly husband
Cornelis. They are surrounded by objects showing her husband’s
piety, yet he has not been able to resist including a tulip,
its petals full and on the point of dropping. For Cornelis,
like many of his fellow Dutchmen, has made money from the
speculation on this exotic flower and its bulbs. As the painter,
Jan van Loos, starts to capture Sophia’s likeness on
his canvas, so a slow passion begins to burn. And as the execution
of the painting unfolds, so a slow dance is begun between
the household’s inhabitants. Ambitions, desires and
dreams breed a grand deception, and as the lies multiply,
events move towards a thrilling and tragic climax.
“A story of love, deceit, changelings, and mistaken
identity worthy of a Restoration dramatist.”
(Daily Mail)
“A sumptuous and enthralling novel about art, love,
illusion and money…with the denouement of a classic.”
(The Times)
“A byzantine plot that hurtles towards disaster, while
retaining the polished veneer of a Dutch interior.”
(Harpers & Queen)
“Sensuous and masterly…a gorgeous novel.”
(Mail on Sunday)
“A scintillating story of lust, deception and retribution.
(Independent on Sunday)
240 pages (6 January, 2000)
Publisher: Vintage; ISBN: 0099288850
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