Whereas The Miniaturist showed the desperation of life in a gilded cage, The House of Fortune shows what it is like when this cage loses its gilt.
A fat cat, Lucas, lazes around the house as one of the only outward displays of their lost wealth. Thea is the child who remains, raised by her African-Surinamese father Otto, once a servant of the house, her aunt, Nella (the protagonist of The Miniaturist), and their servant, Cordelia. The house echoes with the presence of these ghosts, filling the spaces where their possessions once were, now sold to sustain those who are left, existing in small, warm pockets of a draughty monument. Its original owners are dead, one of them executed for the crime of sodomy, the other dead in childbirth. Picking up the story eighteen years after The Miniaturist, The House of Fortune returns to the beautiful house on the Herengracht, in Amsterdam, where we left it.
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