THE MUSE by JESSIE BURTON

THE MUSE

BY JESSIE BURTON

THE BLURB:-

A picture hides a thousand words...

On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastion climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, ready for her luck to change. She has been employed as a typist by the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick, who unlocks a potential Odelle didn't realise she had. When a lost masterpiece arrives at the gallery, Quick seems to know more than she is prepared to reveal and Odelle is determined to unravel the truth.

The painting's secret history lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come two strangers, who overturn the Schloss family with explosive and devastating consequences.

THE REALITY:-

I'd like to say that I found this unputdownable, but the truth is simply that I didn't have the time for that to be so, what with having to study for my MA and also having to prepare for my recent holiday in Devon. But I learnt oh so much from this book as it touched on subjects that are really relevant to my course, and it did that through the 1936 artistry of Olive Schloss and the 1967 writing of Odelle Bastien.

These are my relevant resonating points, at a time when I was studying how process is as important as product:-

* Isaac mentioning that art means nothing if you're not seeing the world differently, how novelty makes a difference.

* Olive saying she'd never before felt so connected to the doing of the work, and how not everything has to have a point.

* Quick saying the painting is insidious, like there's an extra layer to it. You can't get at it but it's there.

* Olive learning that if you really want to see your work to completion, you have to desire it more than you believe. You have to fight it, fight yourself and that's not easy.

* Odelle doesn't want to share her work, and she mentions that it's not very good. Quick points out that it doesn't matter whether she thinks it's good or not. Quick quotes '“You don't come into it when someone else is reading”'.

* The work is not about you, it's about the experience for the reader.

Lesson points aside, I've also been learning about the qualities of voice and how accents and nuances, as well as the way a person delivers their words, make all the difference to a story. The author has certainly done her research through the characters of Trinidadian immigrant Odelle and her friend Cynthia. When these two get together you can almost feel the essential idioms jump off the page to greet you, and you feel like you are in the room with these two women. Contrast that with the 'proper' English Odelle feels inclined to have to use at all other times, and especially when she's at work, with Quick. By the strangest coincidence, I finished this book whilst in Devon. Later that night, I switched on the TV to find that Back In Time For Brixton (which I've seen before) which explores the social history of postwar immigrants from the Caribbean, was being repeated.

I loved the way the separate sections of the book all slotted together, although not everything is explained, leaving some room for manoeuvre for the reader. There were some horrible scenes- the violence of the humiliation of Teresa was distressing and this is one reason why I don't like war references (in this case the Spanish Civil war) in novels. I also wished that (spoiler alert) Lawrie and Odelle could have had a happy ending, and found their separation distressing. I didn't quite get how she wasn't inclined to think she could have had both her creativity as well as love, and it looks like she ended up a spinster, in her house in Wimbledon.  It also touched a chord when Odelle realised that, at the end of the day, we are alone.

This book is a must read, and I will look out for more work by this superb, exceptional author.