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A captivating and brilliantly realized story of two young women - a Caribbean immigrant in 1960s London, and a bohemian woman in 1930s Spain - and the powerful mystery that ties them together.
England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery. Drawn into a complex web of secrets and deceptions, Odelle does not know what to believe or who she can trust, including her mesmerizing colleague, Marjorie Quick.
Spain, 1936. Olive Schloss, the daughter of a Viennese Jewish art dealer and an English heiress, follows her parents to Arazuelo, a poor, restless village on the southern coast. She grows close to Teresa, a young housekeeper, and Teresa's half-brother, Isaac Robles, an idealistic and ambitious painter newly returned from the Barcelona salons. A dilettante buoyed by the revolutionary fervor that will soon erupt into civil war, Isaac dreams of being a painter as famous as his countryman Picasso.
Raised in poverty, these illegitimate children of the local landowner revel in exploiting the wealthy Anglo-Austrians. Insinuating themselves into the Schloss family's lives, Teresa and Isaac help Olive conceal her artistic talents with devastating consequences that will echo into the decades to come.
Rendered in exquisite detail, The Muse is a passionate and enthralling tale of desire, ambition, and the ways in which the tides of history inevitably shape and define our lives.
"Historical fiction lovers as well as fans of B.A. Shapiro's The Muralist and The Art Forger will appreciate the intriguing characters, skillful writing, and evocative atmosphere of two very different eras." - Library Journal
"Tidily if dully concluded, this second novel fails to hit the same sweet, wholly integrated spot as its predecessor, but Burton fans will be happy to reunite with her committed storytelling." - Kirkus
"The intricate way in which Burton pulls the two plots together is unexpected and impressive, a most original story about creative freedom, finding one's voice, and the quest for artistic redemption." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The Muse was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Wolf Marloh
Jessie Burton studied at the University of Oxford and then went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is the author of three novels for adults, The Miniaturist (2014), The Muse (2016) and The Confession (2019), and is both a Sunday Times no. 1 bestseller and a New York Times bestseller. The Miniaturist sold a million copies worldwide in its first year and has also been adapted for television by the BBC. Jessie is now published in forty languages. Her first children's story, The Restless Girls, was published by Bloomsbury in 2018.
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