Amsterdam in the year 1705. Thea Brandt is turning eighteen, and is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, winter has set in – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day that her mother Marin died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present.

Nella is desperate to save the family and maintain appearances, to find Thea a husband who will guarantee her future, and when they receive an invitation to Amsterdam’s most exclusive ball, she is overjoyed – perhaps this will set their fortunes straight. And indeed, the ball does set things spinning: new figures enter their life, promising new futures. But their fates are still unclear, and when Nella feels a strange prickling sensation on the back of her neck, she wonders if the miniaturist has returned for her . . .

Set in 18th century Amsterdam, Jessie Burton’s The House of Fortune is the companion novel to her internationally best-selling novel ‘The Miniaturist’. Taking place 18 years after the end of The Miniaturist, Nella has helped raise Otto and Marin’s daughter Thea without any reappearances of the miniaturist. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t far away.

Nella’s family are struggling financially — Otto has lost his job and Nella and Thea are keeping up appearances despite their savings drying up. Thea, unbeknownst to anyone else, is conducting an affair with a local painter who she hopes to marry — she rejects Nella’s suggestion of marrying into wealth to save the family from financial distress.

“Thea closes the front door and leans against it in the cold air, placing the golden dress on the step in order to rip apart the paper. When she sees what is lying inside, she lets out a gasp of delight. It seems impossible, but it’s true. Here is Walter, miniaturised to absolute perfection.”

Written in third person and moving between Nella and Thea’s perspectives, we once again experience that reserved, distant voice that Jessie Burton is known for. Despite being set one generation later, the events from the first book still loiter in this tale — the circumstances surrounding Thea’s birth, the identity of her mother and what she was like as a person, the death of Nella’s first husband, and of course, the miniaturist who plagued her marriage. When Thea begins receiving small miniatures delivered to the house, it propels her in a direction no one could foresee, quickening the pacing towards a tense finale.

Whilst I didn’t love this as much as the first book (I don’t feel that the magic and intrigue is as prevalent as this one),Thea takes the reins throughout the story and is quite the fascinating protagonist. The period setting of the book is, as always, elegant and enticing to read, and it is enjoyable to step back into these lives eight years later.

“There is a long silence. The four of them contemplate a future that has suddenly become yet more uncertain. It’s as if the ropes that were tethering the have been severed, and are snaking away, and Thea and her family are drifting into unknown waters with no sense of where they might go.”

Through Thea’s role and presence in society, we come to understand the inherent prejudice of a child born from an upper class, white mother and an African servant. Other people’s feelings towards Thea’s lineage can be felt bubbling under the surface, threatening to rise with each passing chapter. And because Thea feels she is left in the dark about her mother, and the circumstances leading up to her death, she rebels against the family’s expectations of her.

I know this is marketed as a companion novel and not a sequel, but I feel that prior knowledge of The Miniaturist is advised for this one – truthfully, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read the first book. There’s something so magical about the original story, which makes it all the more enticing to step back into this world for The House of Fortune. If you have read The Miniaturist, but it’s been some time and you can’t really remember what happened, I was the same and just did a quick Google search to refresh my memory.

“Jacob is impressed by the house, Nella can tell. Its flesh might be scanter these days, but the bones are strong. He cranes his head back to admire the trompe l’oeil on the ceiling. He stares at the grisailles on the wall with the same intensity he had focused upon Thea in Clara Sarragon’s antechamber.”

Recommended for fans of The Miniaturist, as well as sweeping, magical sagas set in 18th century Europe. There’s a beauty to this setting and these characters, brought to life with Jessie’s signature prose and dialogue. Readership skews female, 25+

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The House of Fortune
Jessie Burton
July 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Meet Dorcas, a spirited 12-year-old struggling to contain her irrepressible humour and naughty streak in a family of Christadelphians in 1960s Adelaide. She is her mother’s least favourite child and always at the bottom of the order on the family’s string of beads that she and her younger siblings Ruthy and Caleb reorder according to their mother’s ever-changing moods.

Dorcas, an aspiring vet, dreams of having a dog, or failing that, a guinea pig named Thruppence. Ruthy wants to attend writing school, and Caleb wants to play footy with the local team. But Christadelphians aren’t allowed to be ‘of the world’ and when their older brother Daniel is exiled to door knock and spread the good word in New South Wales after being caught making out with Esther Dangerfield at youth camp, each try their hardest to suppress their dreams for a bigger life. But for a girl like Dorcas, dreams have a habit of surfacing at the most inopportune moments, and as she strives to be the daughter her mother desires, a chain of mishaps lead to a tragedy no one could have foreseen.

Denise Picton’s debut novel The Family String explores 12-year-old Dorcas’ childhood in 1960s Adelaide within a strict religious household. Her family are Christadelphians, a denomination of Christianity that leaves little room for fun, culture or entertainment. Dorcas is an energetic, free-spirited child who struggles within the confines of the family home, is always getting into trouble with her mother, and who doesn’t quite understand why her actions are always being punished.

Because the book is written from Dorcas’ perspective, it allows for a fun and lively perspective. Her voice is insightful and hopeful, and so even when the book takes a dark turn, we feel the heart and soul of the story permeating with each passing chapter. Not every reader will love reading from Dorcas’ perspective, but she is an intelligent and observant character and allows for an entertaining journey.

“To record our views about the order of Mum’s love, Caleb used six wooden beads he got from Mr Driver next door. Caleb nominated the best gold one as Mum and put her bead at the top of a piece of string that was thick enough to hold the beads exactly where he put them on the thread.”

The Family String does well to weave in so many overarching themes in the book without feeling contrived or rigid. A key exploration in the story is the dynamic and complex relationships between mothers and daughters, and the importance of repairing a broken relationship. The Family String also explores depression and how people regarded depression in the 1960s, as well as religion and religious constraint within the family home.

Strengths also lie in the secondary characters – the compassionate Mr Driver was one of my favourites. The community is close-knit and sometimes this causes friction within Dorcas’ family. In a town where everyone knows your business, tensions rise and arguments spark. I’m sure readers from small towns will be able to relate!

“I was still in the bad books for going down to the shop one night after school and buying ten cents’ worth of mixed lollies and putting them on the tick under Mum’s name. Mum was furious when she found out I’d charged them to her account and yelled at Mrs Abrahams in the shop as much as she yelled at me.”

Admittedly, I did feel that the turning point in the novel came a bit too late in the story. A great portion of the novel is setting up the dynamic within the family and the community and so the pacing does start to lull a bit in the middle of the book – I was starting to question the direction of the book, wondering when the climax of the story was going to near. Ultimately, the book explores a fractured relationship between mother and daughter and how they have to reconnect after a family tragedy. But this family tragedy comes quite late in the story, and I would’ve liked more time to be spent in the aftermath of that tragedy rather than the events preceding it.

And whilst I loved Dorcas’ perspective and her wild nature, it doesn’t ever feel like she learns from her mistakes or spends much time reconciling with her actions. I know she’s a child, but some of her actions are deliberately rebellious and there is quite a horrific tragedy at the end of the story, and there doesn’t seem to be much contemplation coming through from Dorcas. She simply misbehaves and then moves on to misbehave again.

“One day, Mrs Johnson had said about the most wonderful thing I had ever heard. She told me that if my mum and dad gave permission, I could have Sixpence as my very own as soon as my dad made a safe enclosure in our garden. I was so excited I ran straight home and nearly knocked Mum over when I hurtled into the kitchen with the news. Her answer was a very firm no.”

Heartfelt fiction about family, responsibility and the impressionable years of our youth, The Family String is recommended for literary readers. Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Family String
Denise Picton
June 2022
Ultimo Press