Books

When author Tracy Chevalier goes on tour, she says, her audience is usually mostly made up of women. For her latest book, though – 2007's Burning Bright – she's been pleasantly surprised that, "for the first time, there are almost always a number of men who turn up."

That's probably because of the subject of the novel, 18th-century poet and painter William Blake. "There's quite a few men who really love Blake, I've discovered, and they're always easy to spot," she says by phone from London.

"They'll usually be sporting a beard, looking a little eccentric themselves, of like minds with Blake. And they always ask some persnickety little detail about him. The women love it; we all giggle together when that happens."

Ms. Chevalier, who will be in Dallas on Friday, has made a career of fictionalizing the lives of famous painters. Her breakout book, 1999's best-selling Girl With a Pearl Earring, featured Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer as its central character, and was made into a movie starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. 2003's The Lady and the Unicorn centers around the creation, by an unknown artist, of the medieval tapestries now housed in Paris' Musée de Cluny.

The author sets the stage around the artist or artwork, then interweaves the lives of ordinary people. In Girl With a Pearl Earring, it's a serving girl named Griet. In The Lady and the Unicorn, she invents an artist, Nicolas des Innocents – "Imagine Johnny Depp in the role as you're reading," she instructs – who is summoned to the home of the real-life Le Viste family to create the tapestries.

In Burning Bright, which came out in paperback Tuesday, she spins the tale around an adolescent boy and girl who are neighbors of Blake's in the Lambeth area of London.

Ms. Chevalier became fascinated with Blake, she says, after seeing a 2001 exhibition of his work at the Tate Museum in London, where she has lived for 23 years (she's a native of Washington, D.C.). "I knew his work before, but the cumulative effect of seeing room after room of it was amazing. I thought, 'This guy was crazy, I've got to find out more.' "

As she researched, she says, she became especially enamored of Blake's illuminated books Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, "which really spoke to me about adolescence – that time when you're both innocent and experienced at the same time."

By using young teens as her protagonists, she was also able to portray Blake in a more generous light, she says. "Kids are much less judgmental. Blake was so unusual, so eccentric, it's great to present him through their eyes. ... He becomes like the backdrop for them; it's against him that they compare their lives."

At Friday's event, she plans to talk about why art inspires her (using slides of Blake's work in the background), and read from both Burning Bright and Girl With a Pearl Earring. She'll also do a signing afterward.

Amid the bustle of a seven-city tour, she's also at work on her next novel, which is slated for autumn 2009. It's about Mary Anning, an early-19th-century British woman who discovered some of the first fossils in England. "She was a working-class woman, and she sold them to help get by," Ms. Chevalier says. "So the book's about that, and also about how the issues of creationism and evolution affected her own religious beliefs."

The author is also on a quest for a new personal obsession. Early in life, she had made a life goal of seeing all the surviving Vermeers "in the flesh." She accomplished that in July 2004, when she attended a London Sotheby's auction, at which the 36th Vermeer sold for $30 million to Las Vegas casino developer Steve Wynn. "I was sitting on my hands the whole time, trying not to start bidding," she says.

"Now I'm a little bereft, having seen them all. What do I do now? I'm casting around for another artist to look at who'll inspire me as much. There are way too many Blakes; it needs to be someone a little more reasonable timewise."

Whoever it is, he or she will probably find themselves in a book, with Ms. Chevalier hoping to turn her readers on to the artist. "If someone says reading my book made them want to Google William Blake, or go find out if there's a Vermeer near them, that's the best compliment they can give me.

"If I can get someone to slow down and look at art a little more, maybe look at it in a different way – that's a wonderful thing, to feel that a book actually enhances someone's life."Plan your life

Tracy Chevalier will appear at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Arts and Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St. $37 general admission, $32 educators, librarians and senior citizens, $22 students. 214-922-1220.

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