Editor’s note: SLR has two Reads of the Month for December. We think you will love both books.
In The Miniaturist’s Assistant, Katherine Scott Crawford would, for a moment, like you to believe that Charleston, South Carolina, is a town like any other town. If you’ve ever been to Charleston, you know that is simply not so. This story could not have taken place anywhere but Charleston.
It’s not only the tale Katherine spins, which is spellbinding, magical, and rampant with possibilities, but also the reader is immediately drawn into the conversational tone of the main character, Gamble. It is as if you were sitting at her feet listening to her tell the story, just to you and no one else, because, quite frankly, who else would believe she lived simultaneously in two different centuries, two hundred years apart? And, she may not have been the only one.
No matter your own age, Gamble is your new friend, someone you want to get to know better and spend more time with. Her enthusiasm, dedication and curiosity are contagious. You will imagine going to visit her in the museum where she works, and having her show you around and explaining to you how she restores miniature portraits:
“Painted on ivory sliced thin from animal tusk or whale bone, and sometimes enclosed with a lock of hair (for romance or remembrance), these pint size portraits were often worn as jewelry or presented in display cases.”
You may not have a clue what a miniature portrait is, or even looks like; perhaps the closest thing you’ve ever seen is a faded photograph in an old locket. Even if you don’t go right away to Google a miniature portrait, you are very soon going to have an understanding of its nuances, and feel like you have seen many of them because of her carefully worded descriptions.
And then you will meet Tolliver, in his bespoke tuxedo, and he will sweep you off your feet. You will want to buy your own man a bespoke tuxedo, even if you don’t have a man, or he would never have an occasion to wear one, because you will want him to share some of the characteristics Tolliver has and that is the only one you could pay for. You may just fall a tiny little bit in love with Tolliver yourself. (I, personally, love Tolliver because he gave Gamble “a signed, first-edition copy of Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.”)
Part historical fiction, ghost story, romance, mystery, social commentary, this time-slip story is one big rabbit hole and you will become Alice tumbling down into it.
Think Charleston: 2004. Now go back to the Charleston of 1804. Very much the same city in terms of architecture, social hierarchy, etc. but one huge difference—slavery:
“The city’s history was heavy. You can’t have been home to the New World’s largest slave port and think it’s all going to be sunshine and mint juleps, all charm and manners. Every place you set your foot in this city has been touched by human bondage. Black, white, and brown; freed, indentured, and enslaved lives have intertwined here since the beginning. For a visitor, especially, it gives a simple walk through a private, lush, gorgeously fragrant Charleston courtyard a heaviness you might not otherwise miss, to know the softening bricks you trod were trod not so long ago by people without freedom.”
Tolliver is of mixed race, Gamble is a white woman, and they are the very best of friends. When Gamble sees a ghost in the alley, and she tells Tolliver, he doesn’t blink. He spent his early childhood on a Georgia barrier island with his extended family of Geechee heritage. They believed in ghosts and so did he.
Gamble slips back and forth between 2004 and 1804, at first because of curiosity, and then later to try to set things right. In 1804 she befriends the artist who created the miniature paintings she has been restoring. As a woman from the 21st century entering the early 19th century, her opinions and mores are quite divergent from the people she meets, and although she is given period appropriate clothing to wear, her differences are readily apparent, no matter how much she tries to hide them. Most apparent is that she cannot abide slavery and her resulting actions get her into trouble, and have consequences for her friends.
The complexities in this novel are as sinuous as the way Gamble eases herself between two distinctly different centuries, and the conclusion is most satisfying.
Katherine Scott Crawford
Katherine Scott Crawford is the award-winning author of Keowee Valley. A former backpacking guide, newspaper columnist, and recovering academic, she’d rather be in the woods with her dog than anywhere else. An eleventh-generation Southerner, she lives with her family in the North Carolina mountains.
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