I love Girl with a Pearl Earring, though I managed to miss the movie. Fallen Angels pleased me less: Tracy Chevalier tried a narrative technique that she didn't use well. This third book--but effectively her sophomore one, considering how wildly successful Girl was after an unknown first--had several characters, and she told her tale with several first-person points of view. The problem is, if each chapter hadn't started with the speaking character's name, the writing would have not otherwise have indicated who was speaking. Griet, the Girl, spoke with such a clear individual voice that the banal interchangeability of the not-quite-characters in Fallen Angels was more distressing than if I had never encountered her.
Irvine Welsh changed the speaker in Trainspotting and he did it well. When Begbie or Spud or Mark speaks, you can tell because the Beggar is (even) more foul-mouthed than the rest and Spud says "likesay" more and Renton has the best grammar, relatively speaking. William Faulkner changes the speaker only four times in The Sound and the Fury, and though the first section might lose the less determined reader, you can damn well tell Benjy from Quentin from Jason from Dulcie. Or Caddy, whatever.
In The Lady and the Unicorn, Chevalier does the same thing as in Fallen Angels but hasn't got any better at it. The latter's subject matter didn't mean so much to me that the mistreatment hurt. Chevalier spoke of the the subject matter of her next book when I saw her tour two years ago for Angels, when I was freshly back from Paris where I had seen the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the flesh. This time, the mistreatment hurts. I might be done with Chevalier.
There are several characters and at least seven speakers. Only by their chapter headings, and not immediately by their content, nor ever by their language (an illiterate painter vs. an illiterate but upperclass mistress of a house vs. an upper class but at least minimally literate master of a house would speak differently) can the reader distinguish the speaker.
Twenty-two nonfiction, plus two abridged non-fiction (three audio):
Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Sue Birtwistle, The Making of Pride and Prejudice
Catherine Burgass, A.S. Byatt's Possession
David Denby, Great Books (audio)
Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
Antonia Fraser, Faith and Treason
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: A Journey
Michal Grynberg, Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts of the Warsaw Ghetto
Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell (audio)
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (audio)
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels
John Leonard, When the Kissing Had to Stop
Michael Moore, Dude, Where's My Country?
Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers
George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society
Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Roger Shattuck, The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built
David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne
Sarah Susanka, Creating the Not-So-Big House
John Sutherland, Is Heathcliff a Murderer?
Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film
Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: A History of the Oxford English Dictionary
Forty-three novels or titled collections of short stories
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Range and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Margaret Atwood, Dancing Girl and Other Stories
Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, My Love
John Banville, Book of Evidence
Antonia S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Michael Chabon, Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon, Summerland
Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys
Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn
Jim Crace, The Devil's Larder: A Feast
Sjil Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book
Denis Guedj, The Parrot's Theorem
Kent Haruf, Plainsong
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (audio)
Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Ursula K. LeGuin, Unlocking the Air: Stories
Sándor Márai, Embers
Yann Martel, Life of Pi (audio)
Robin McKinley, Deerskin
Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Susan Palwick, Flying in Place
Richard Powers, The Goldburg Variations
Pamela Ribon, Why Girls Are Weird
Philip Roth, Human Stain (audio)
José Saramago, The Cave
José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Twenty children's books
Avi, Crispin: The Cross of Lead
Barbara Helen Berg, All the Way to Lhasas
Sharon Creech, Ruby Holler
Chris Crutcher, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
Elizabeth de Borton de Trevino, I, Juan de Pareja
Jeanne DuPrau, City of Ember
Elizabeth Enright, Return to Gone-Away Lake
Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Neil Gaiman, Sandman, vol. 1
Karen Hesse, Stowaway
James Howe, The Misfits
Irene Hunt, Across Five Aprils
Jean Kerr, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Joseph Krumgold, ...And Now Miguel
Linda Sue Park, A Single Shard
J.K. Rowlings, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Lemony Snicket, Slippery Slope
Jerry Spinelli, Crash
Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
Donald Zochert, Laura: the Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Sixty-one short stories, including six audio
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Marjorie Barnard, The Lottery
Julian Barnes, Trespass
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Amy Bloom, Sleepwalking
Elizabeth Bowen, Her Table Spread
Elizabeth Bowen, The Happy Autumn Fields
Antonia S. Byatt, The July Ghost
Antonia S. Byatt, The Stone Woman
Angela Carter, Peter and the Wolf
Willa Silbert Cather, Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament
Kate Chopin, The Storm
Anita Desai, Private Tuition by Mr. Bose
Janet Frame, Swans
Mavis Gallant, The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street
Jane Gardam, The Weeping Child
Ellen Gilchrist, Revenge
Nadine Gordimer, Six Feet of the Country
Bradley Trevor Greive, The Meaning Of Life
Georgina Hammick, The Dying Room
Bessie Head, Looking for a Rain God
Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light
Zora Neale Hurston, John Redding Goes to Sea
Zora Neale Hurston, Muttsy
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
Zora Neale Hurston, The Conscience of the Court
Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits
Rachel Ingalls, Third Time Lucky
Anna Kavan, An Unpleasant Reminder.
A.L. Kennedy, Friday Payday
Jamaica Kincaid, What I Have Been Doing Lately
Doris Lessing, The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange.
Shena Mackay, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
Katherine Mansfield, The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Katherine Mansfield, The Man without a Temperament
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Lorrie More, Places to Look for Your Mind
Alice Munro, Miles City, Montana
Haruki Murakami, Hunting Knife
Suniti Namjoshi, Three Feminist Fables
Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
Grace Paley, The Loudest Voice
Dorothy Parker, Here We Are.
Katherine Anne Porter, Rope
Jean Rhys, Let Them Call It Jazz
José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island
Helen Simpson, Labour
Pauline Smith, The Sisters
Stevie Smith, Sunday at Home.
Ahdaf Soueif, The Wedding of Zeina
Muriel Spark, The First Year of My Life
Jean Stafford, A Summer Day
Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. Wharton
Rose Tremain, The Candle Maker
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Marina Warner, Ariadne after Naxos
Fay Weldon, Weekend
Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the P.O.
Edith Wharton, Souls Belated
Antonia White, The House of Clouds
Virginia Woolf, Solid Objects