The Muse - Jessie Burton

After reading The Miniaturist in August and loving it, I was desperate to start reading The Muse - and I’m happy to report that I loved it even more! Burton’s writing is so vibrant and captivating and I just can’t get enough.

This novel has two plot lines which alternate throughout the book, jumping between 1936 and 1967. We are first introduced to Odelle Bastien who has just got a job as a typist at the Skelton art gallery in London in 1967. Having moved from Trinidad to the UK and since struggled with her identity, Odelle is taken under the wing of her mysterious boss Marjorie Quick. When Odelle’s new boyfriend Lawrie brings a painting he inherited to the gallery to show the curators, it becomes apparent that Quick is connected to this piece of art in some way and has a secret to hide - and Odelle is determined to get to the bottom of it.

We are then taken back to 1936 and our second protagonist Olive Schloss, whose family have moved to rural Spain and into an isolated landscape. Olive is a moody and introverted artist who wishes to keep her work hidden from the world, whilst her new friend Isaac Robles is a political activist and painter who wants to make a statement and invoke change through his work. The truth about Lawrie’s painting in 1967 is held in the relationship between Olive and Isaac and what happened in the rural Spanish mountains in 1936.

The two narratives which interweave throughout this novel are equally immersive and gripping, and Burton connects the two storylines so cleverly. Her characterisation is so detailed that you can see Odelle and Olive so clearly in your mind and really become attached to both of them, as well as other memorable characters in the book. I’d say of the two, I marginally preferred Odelle’s story in 1967, but it was pretty close! If you haven’t read any of Burton’s work I would highly highly recommend it - now I can’t wait to read The Confession!