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: I loved all the twists and turns, drama and intrigue. There were a few times, especially in the 1930’s Spain setting, that it got slightly slow for me, but I think again that is my usual indifference to historical fiction coming through, rather than any fault of the writer. this is just everything - the rhythm of the sentences, the vividness of the description, her depiction of workplace integration as startled british politeness without rancor that still manages to reference the bitter aftertaste of colonialism's legacy. it kills me.

The young English woman feels inspired by Spain and paints in secret, sharing her work only with Teresa and Isaac. Harold has expressed the view that females are incapable of great art, so she is reluctant to subject her work to his blindered scrutiny. Sarah commissions Isaac to paint a portrait of her and Olive. She may have ulterior motives.

It's a good book to put someone suffering insomnia to sleep. I yawned a lot and paused a lot and read a lot of another book in between. I mostly exaggerate when I'm disappointed but I'll give credit where credit is due. It's not the worst book out there and it can appeal to someone with a different taste. I liked the beginning and parts near the unsatisfactory end. But the middle content was a meh.

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 . So why didn’t the whole add up to the sum of it’s parts? Well, I can’t tell you about the whole, but I can tell you about the half of it. Spain, 1937. Olive Schloss, the daughter of a Viennese Jewish art dealer and English heiress, follows her parents to Arazuelo, a poor, restless village on the southern coast. She grows close to Teresa, a young housekeeper, and her 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.

The Sydney Morning Herald

I am totally in awe of Jessie Burton’s talent as a writer. Her scope, both geographic and historical, is extraordinary, and her prose is rich and sensuous. I cannot imagine the amount of research she must have put into this, her second novel, The Muse, but then again her first, The Miniaturist, set in 17th century Amsterdam, was a similar historical triumph. It sold over a million copies.

No sophomore jinx in her second effort, and no understudy role either. With The Muse Jessie Burton shows quite decisively that she has arrived as a literary force, a star, and almost certainly, an inspiration for others. Suddenly, my thoughts were enormous in that tiny flat, because there was nobody to hear them and make them manageable, nobody cajoling me or supporting me, or holding out their arms for a hug." as much as i enjoyed The Miniaturist, the synopsis of this one didn't grab me right away: caribbean émigré in 1960s london, bohemian woman in 1930s spain, powerful mystery, art world, revolutionary fervor, civil war - it seemed too disparate to be likely to hold my attention through the distractions of pain spasms and medical invasions and immodest hospital gowns and the steady iv drips of painkillers. 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: So says Olive Schloss, a virtuoso young painter in 1930s Andalusia who refuses to take credit for her work. Just as it was in The Miniaturist, the process of creating is to the fore in Burton's new novel.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. The author, Jessie Burton, has a brilliant ability to put fancy words together in sophisticated forms and I respect her for it. Her prose game is very decent and shows the potentials and capabilities of an illustrious writer, but still not in a mind-blowing way if you get what I mean. That said, the story didn't live up to her beautified writing style although it had so many attractive elements. The prose was flowery beyond belief. This was compounded by the fact that the reader seemed to continually adopt an overwrought style more befitting a Shakespearian play. The accents also seemed exaggerated to the point of distraction. odelle has a similar observation, listening to the BBC'c Caribbean Voices on the radio as a little girl The mystery behind the painting wasn't as captivating as I hoped for. It wasn't a riddle you would enjoy solving.

While The Muse was a novel about the creative drive of painters, The Confession is a meditation on fiction and the compulsion to invent alternative realities. Not only does Constance spend much time theorising on the mechanics of her craft, her helpmeet “Laura Brown” is also an act of pure self-invention. From the outset the reader is made aware that “Laura” is really Rose Simmons, the baby abandoned by Elise, who has worked her way into Constance’s confidence in the hope of extracting information from the last person to have seen her mother alive. Meanwhile in 1936, Spain is on the verge of war and revolution and Olive Schloss; daughter of Harold and Sarah, and aspiring artist is entranced by the mysterious and enigmatic brother and sister; Isaac and Teresa Robles. 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. Like most artists, everything I produced was connected to who I was - and so I suffered according to how my work was received. The idea that anyone might be able to detach their personal value from their public output was revolutionary.” Odelle’s experiences in London were depicted really well. Her hopeless job search, her frustration with locals knowing nothing about Trinidad (although it was a part of the empire,) while she knows so much about London, always having to prove herself, always having to work five times as hard to be at the same level as her peers, everyone constantly misspelling and mispronouncing both her surname and her given name in ridiculous ways. And, most of all, Odelle’s own feelings about her experience:The majority of the work was by men, but I would listen enraptured by the words and voices of Una Marson, Gladys Lindo, Constance Hollar - and Cynth would pipe up, 'one day you be read out, Delly' - and her little shining face, her bunches, she always made me feel like it was true. Seven years old, and she was the only one who ever told me to keep going. By 1960 that programme had stopped, and I came to England two years later with no idea what to do with my stories. I thought London would mean prosperity and welcome. A Renaissance place. Glory and success. I thought leaving for England was the same as stepping out of my house and onto the street, just a slightly colder street where a beti with a brain could live next door to Elizabeth the Queen." I pressed on beyond half-way but then gave up. First DNF in a while. In truth, I thought it was simply dreadful. 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. In a nutshell, this ardent yet poignant book will arrest the minds of the readers that it won't let them look away from its elegance, beauty and pain. If not for the story, read the book for its strong female characters of those long forgotten era.