(mysterious music ) - I first came up with the idea for "The Miniaturist" when I was in Amsterdam in October, 2009.
I was there on a short holiday and we went to the Rijksmuseum, and that's where I first saw the doll's house the real doll's house that became the kind of center symbol, if you like, of the novel, and my point of focus for writing the whole thing.
And I was immediately struck by how beautiful it was, but also how imposing it was, as much as it was very intricate and intimate.
But it wasn't until I found out that the woman who owned it, a woman called Petronella Oortman, spent as much money on it as a real house that I became interested in the psychology of this doll's house and what it symbolized both in the city of Amsterdam and both for this woman in her domestic, claustrophobic existence.
- It's such a wonderful book.
The story itself is so thought-provoking, and interesting, and unusual, and unsettling.
- This is witchcraft.
- I had heard of Jessie's book but I hadn't read it, and then I got the scripts through and I read them all in one go, loved them, and then bought the book straight away.
- I'd read "The Miniaturist" not long after it came out.
I thought it was really interesting, and has very strong feminist themes in it, so I was very excited by it.
- And the characters are so layered, they have such inner tension, all of them, there's so much that we're all hiding.
And that's all in Jessie's writing.
- We stand or fall together.
- I read it in manuscript, there were 11 publishers bidding for it.
And I did meet them for lunch, made my offer and left it on the table for a year.
And then they came back, luckily for me, and decided I was the right home for it.
- When the bidding war started, I was still working in the city when my new-ish literary agent left me this voicemail, and I've still got the piece of paper.
On one side it's all my chores that I'm having to do for these businessmen and on the other side is ten publishers' names from the lowest bid to the highest, which is an incredibly surreal moment for me and it just carried on.
