I spend some time with medieval tapestries

The Lady and the Unicorn ***
By Tracy Chevalier

If I'd been assigned to give this book a title, it would have been "Hendy Nicholas Designs Tapestries While Screwing Around in France and Belgium." The book is peopled with a lot of the same characters you find in "The Canterbury Tales" and with many of the same plot lines--bedding and birthing, trade rivalry, bawds and drinking, and true love unconsummated.

But Chevalier knows a lot about late medieval tapestries and art history, and it was fun to see her weave a story (as it were) around the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. (There are six of them, each for one of the five senses plus an extra. Click on the famous unicorn in capitivty, left, to visit a cool medieval bestiary that includes the unicorn.)

Wisely, the tapestries remain the main "characters" of the book, and Chevalier doesn't muddle that focus with a lot of sub-plots and side tracks. There's just enough human drama to underscore the time and effort it took to make a tapestry by hand.

And there are interesting glimpses of the political scene in the waning years of the Middle Ages, too: Leon the Jewish merchant whose family converted (or maybe not) to avoid persecution. Jean de Viste and his family, who bought their nobility by toadying up to Louix XI. The Brussels Weaver's Guild and its powers and rules, which include proscriptions against women learning the trade. The cloister and its increasing reliance on women with large dowries to keep the operation running.

A light and engaging read.