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"Lady and Unicorn" by Tracy Chevalier Length: 8 hours ISBN: Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Here’s an intesting book! Step into the medieval cities of Paris and Brussels, learn about the trades of a painter and a weaver, and the life and privileges of the rich and powerful commissioning artwork from them. And get to know about the passion and love, sometimes rather graphic, of these times.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character in the book and the story is read by two narrators. Robert Blumenfeld performs the male voices and Terry Donnelly the female ones. They interpret each character and give them very different voices. I like this first person narrative, the characters have their own voices and they come alive and tell their stories with each a unique perspective.

A court painter, Nicolas des Innocents, is summoned by the nouveau riche aristocrat Jean Le Viste to design some tapestries for one of his great halls, celebrating his rising status at Court. Nicolas meets the oldest daughter Claude and it is a “coup de foudre” between them. But this passion is of course impossible due to the class difference. She is well guarded by servants or nuns, he is sent to Belgium to oversee the tapestries’ completion.

The tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn that inspired Chevalier to write this novel are currently hanging in a museum in France. They depict the senses: Taste, smell, touch, vision, hearing - each represented in separate panels. In the novel, Nicolas is giving all the different female figures in the panels the faces of the women in his life: Claude and her mother, the weaver’s wife and her daughter. The author paints an interesting love story behind the mysterious medieval tapestries, and the different strands of the story - the voices - are masterly woven together.

I have heard that an earlier novel by Chevalier, Girl With a Pearl Earring, is an even better read than this one, and if that’s true, I can’t wait to read it!

Tags: lady and the unicorn, tracy chevalier, audiobook, fiction, history, france, tapestry, paris, brussels

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