The Muse

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This book is about inspiration and the process of creation. About working in anonymity for the sole purpose of working vs. creating for acclaim or compensation, and about the freedom the former brings.

Burton constructs the dual plotline with painstaking craft, and has a good ear for the ambient interruptions of nature: “the cicadas began to build their rasping wall of sound”; “Bees drowsing on the fat flower heads, farmers’ voices calling, birdsong arpeggios spritzing from the trees”. Seductive, exhilarating and suspenseful, The Muse is an addictive novel about aspiration and identity, love and obsession, authenticity and deception – a magnificent creation and a story you will never forget. “ The Confession also follows The Muse in establishing a dual time-frame. Episodes set in the present day illustrate Constance’s increasing dependency on Laura as she struggles to break her silence with a new book. These passages are interleaved with scenes from the early 1980s when Constance was at the height of her fame, the author of two influential novels and a much-cited essay on female empowerment. Throughout this halcyon period of large advances and Hollywood film offers, Constance’s closest companion was her lover Elise Morceau; a young, waif-like woman she met while walking on Hampstead Heath in north London.

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My, how beautiful is Jessie Burton's writing? Almost exactly a year ago (June 3rd 2015 actually) I was almost done with The Miniaturist. I loved it. I loved the writing, I loved the historical setting, I loved the story and every single thing about it. When I heard about The Muse I was extremely curious and being approved for an arc made me squeal with joy. Now, The Muse isn't as beautiful as The Miniaturist was imo, but it was indeed lovely and sad and everything inbetween. Was the difference between being a workaday painter and being an artist simply other people believing in you, or spending twice as much money on your work?” of the two stories, i liked odelle's much more. she's a more appealing character, and she does indeed have a way with words, even the ones she doesn't speak aloud to those who would condescend to her. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Is there ever such a thing as a whole story, or an artist's triumph, a right way to look through the glass? It all depends on where the light falls.”

Burton's first novel for children, The Restless Girls, was published in September 2018. [12] The story is based on the Brothers Grimm tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. [13] It’s well-crafted on the whole but the linking of the two timelines is a bit heavy handed. One of the main characters in the 1967 strand is a Trinidadian immigrant and I don’t think Burton quite pulls this off. Odelle experiences no racism in the novel, not something that would have happened in 1960s London. The sections which concern the Spanish Civil War was rather two dimensional and unconvincing. The sections on the creative processes is stronger. There was also an issue with some of the language, a bit too 21st century for the 1960s and 1930s. There are complaints about the difficulties women artists had:

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I immensely enjoyed reading Odelle's story. Her voice, her thoughts, everything fit. She's curious, she has a lively mind and she knows that, considering that she's an immigrant and a woman she has to work harder than most people to achieve her goal: becoming a published writer. Odelle is the kind of girl I want to see in books: smart, curious, strong in a quiet but unmistakable way. Her side of the story was lovely and touching. Burton engages in a fair bit of parallelism. Odelle is an immigrant to London. Olive is a foreigner in Spain. Both are creatives, Odelle with writing, Olive with painting. Both Olive and Odelle hide their work from most people. Both find inspiration in a love interest, and feel unable to create in the absence of that other. Both have their work exposed to the world without their consent. Both Odelle and Olive imagine paradise in a place that is anything but. Olive sees Spain as Eden-ic and uses that in one very lush painting. But she does not see the turmoil that underlies the country until it is almost upon her. Odelle sees London as a sort of literary nirvana, but has had to endure years of racism and limited opportunity. She does, however, experience a Shangri-La moment in the lush growth of a London garden. Other items to keep an eye out for are characters projecting their expectations, good and bad, onto others. There are several parent/child, mentor/acolyte connections at play. Seeing people or things in terms of fairy tales, religious and secular, pops up a few times as well. A very wealthy English-Austrian family moves to a poor region of Spain. The reaction of the local people is very realistic – they try to benefit from the visitors, while at the same way not getting too close, knowing these people are only passing through and will one day leave. The daughter, Olive, struggles with this reaction. She wants to be taken seriously, to show that this is her home and that their fights are her fight. It’s no surprise that no one believes her, and everyone thinks it’s all a game to her. At any point, she can get on her ship and leave war and danger behind. But Olive is determined, and she proves her loyalty in the most heartbreaking way possible.

So many novelists over these last few years, it seems are telling stories from dual time frames and if done right there can be a meaningful connection between them . I thought the story had so much promise at first. It touched on some topics that would make for interesting discussion - the view of women artists in the 1930's , who and why does the artist, painter or writer, create for - themselves, for outside praise and recognition? We glimpse civil war in Spain and it also touches on racial issues in the 1960's in England. So there is much in the way of food for thought. On top of that there is a mystery over a painting, love interests, and the hold on the reader waiting to see how Olive's life in a town in Spain in 1936 would connect with Odelle's in London in 1967 . Tim Masters (1 December 2014). "Miniaturist novel named Waterstones book of 2014". BBC News . Retrieved 23 December 2014.There’s little else I can say about the plot of this book without giving something important away. While many of the twists were foreshadowed, there were a couple that came as a surprise to me. I confess that this is a story that would have benefited from a bit more characterization and a little less plodding prose. While the writing was lovely, it tended toward boggy. I liked what the novel had to say about art and the process of creation, and I appreciated that the book highlighted women as artists. But none of the relationships felt true, and the characters didn’t seem to like or accept themselves, which made them hard to enjoy. All of that boils down to this: I enjoyed the philosophical aspects of the story far more than the story itself. That being said, the book has merit, especially for people who appreciate the theory of art or are artists themselves. Jessie's first book for children, The Restless Girls ,was published in September 2018, and Medusa, her second , in October 2021 . Medusa was shortlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Children's Writing.​Her story 'Daphne and the Doughnuts' appeared in The Book of Hopes, a collection of children's stories published in 2020, from which all profits go to the NHS. The Muse" tells the story of two women: Odelle li

Part of the novel is set in Spain, in the 30s, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of an art dealer, works in secret. Her paintings are fraudulently sold in London as the creation of a handsome young Spaniard named Isaac with whom Olive is in love. A parallel narrative belongs to Odelle, a West Indian writer in 60s London whose stories are submitted anonymously for publication. “I became interested in how ego, personality and identity are tied into not only the creation of a work but its commodification – the cult of the artist – and how people will attach extra value to a work because a particular person has painted it when, had they no idea who had created it, they would not pay as much.”but olive's no slouch - a "fizzing girl," with "a plaintive, open face" who paints arresting canvases, and allows another to take the credit. i didn't always understand the decisions she made, but at least she gets to make declarations like, It was always easier to admire someone with a talent, and pity was the path to indifference, and the scene in which that line occurs is probably my favorite in the whole book. it's a perfectly rendered revelation/disappointment moment for olive where she realizes that confidence is not an indication of talent, and men, accustomed to praise and success, were maybe strutting a confidence they hadn't actually earned. earlier in the book, she gets another great long rant, which i'm totally gonna quote because it's golden: Raised in poverty, these illegitimate children of the local landowner revel in exploiting this wealthy Anglo-Austrian family. Insinuating themselves into the Schloss’s lives, Teresa and Isaac help Olive conceal her artistic talents with devastating consequences that will echo into the decades to come. Her third novel for adults, The Confession, was published in 2019. [14] [15] Medusa, her second book for children, was published in 2021. [16]