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I AM REMBRANDT’S DAUGHTER by Lynn Cullen

I AM REMBRANDT’S DAUGHTER

by Lynn Cullen

Pub Date: June 1st, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59990-046-9
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Told in the first person, the tale of Cornelia is achingly familiar: She’s a girl child in her mid-teens, angry, passionate, hungry both literally and figuratively and ignored by her distracted but brilliant parent, the great painter Rembrandt. He is a pathetic figure here: listening to the voice of God in his head; making images with thick impasto paint; no longer desirable to his patrons; and ignoring the needs of daily life while Cornelia struggles to meet them. She loves her brother Titus, adored of Rembrandt, but he marries and leaves her alone to care for vader. Cullen uses a few Dutch words for 17th-century atmosphere, but Cornelia’s bitterness and longing seem very contemporary. The narrative slips back and forth between past (the death of Cornelia’s mother, whom Rembrandt never married) and present, when Cornelia is to leave Amsterdam with her new husband. Cullen uses several of Rembrandt’s paintings in effective ways to tether the story, even though her fictional climax has no historical basis. (author’s note, character list, list of paintings) (Historical fiction. 12+)