Vienna at the dawn of the 20th century. An opulent, extravagant city teeming with art, music and radical ideas. A place where the social elite attend glamorous balls in the city's palaces whilst young intellectuals decry the empire across the tables of crowded cafes. It is a city where anything seems possible - if you are a man. Passionate about short stories, Sophie also works as a digital editor for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and is associate director of the Word Factory literary organisation. She is a first reader and judge for various writing competitions and hosts her own short story club. The Flames is a work of fiction, based on explosive and compelling historical facts. As soon as I encountered the intimate portraits of the “muses” who inspired Schiele’s greatest artworks in the Courtauld gallery in London, I knew I had a great story on my hands – full of sex, scandal, betrayal and heartbreak. Each of the four women I researched and wrote about got burned in their encounter with Schiele. It has been a privilege to breathe life into the bones of their stories, and give them a voice after a century of silence.

The Flames: A gripping historical novel set in 1900s Vienna

The Flames has some of the most memorable characters I’ve come across in the books I have already read in 2022 I felt as if I knew each of the women not just as Schiele’s muses but as individuals, I found all characters three dimensional and even though I didn’t love all the characters I did find them interesting and well suited for the plotline.Over the course of a decade, the four women risk everything – their reputations, their most precious relationships, their sanity and souls – as they try to hold on to the man they each love. As the First World War throws their lives off course forever, and the Spanish influenza pandemic ravages Europe, threatening everyone in its path, one question remains: will any of them emerge unscathed? Vally Neuzil did not come from wealth or have much by way of education. She was born in Tattendorf in 1894, and moved to Vienna with her mother age 12. She became an artist’s model, an occupation which, at that time, was akin to prostitution. This was a time when husbands hardly saw their wives undressed. So it was not an honourable role to take one’s clothes off for money, much less to have to deliver those artworks to Vienna’s elite, who had a taste for the explicit and were willing to pay handsomely to have their appetites sated. On their break-up, Schiele also went on to paint Death and the Maiden, a hauntingly beautiful oil painting that captures their shared distress at their separation. Still, Schiele married the nice girl who lived across the street. But days before the wedding, he made a bizarre proposal of his own to the woman who’d stood by his side: in one of Vienna’s famed coffee shops, where sachertorte could be enjoyed while people’s discussed Freud’s ground-breaking theories, Schiele presented Vally with a contract that promised them two weeks together each summer – his way for things to carry on as they had been. This is a debut novel and I really like the way the author weaves fact with fiction to bring these characters to life. I especially enjoyed the way she explores the potential dynamics between the flames/muses to create a fascinating narrative throughout. The triangle between Egon and the two sisters is especially intriguing but also how Vally fits into the jigsaw. The one that especially fascinates me is the relationship between Egon and Gertrude and here you learn much about the man.

The Flames by Sophie Haydock - Publishers Weekly The Flames by Sophie Haydock - Publishers Weekly

Thought provoking and illuminating - I so enjoyed discovering the world and the women behind works of art I adore' KATE SAWYER, author of THE STRANDING Schiele was still intimate with Vally while he surreptitiously courted, and eventually proposed to, one of the Harms sisters. Class was definitely at play in his decision. Vally would never have been seen as “marriage material”, despite inspiring some of his most profound artworks, including a portrait of her alongside a physalis, painted after his release from prison in 1912. She worked hard, she was loyal, but according to the customs of the day, because she was of a lower class, she wasn’t deemed good enough to become his wife. This is the story of four muses…Women whose bodies were shown in intimate detail, depicted by the charming yet controversial artist Egon Schiele. But who were they? Passionate about short stories, Sophie also works for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and is associate director of the Word Factory literary organisation. If it was the author's intent to bring this women to the fore to show how they influenced a debauched, narcissistic and misogynistic philanderer, then this really does not do it. All the women come off as similar - love becomes obsession before being callously discarded and abandoned for another woman. I felt no connection with any of them as they appear very one dimensional, and Ego Schielle himself I found repulsive in his depraved pursuit of very young women (girls even).blogtour Adventure Ancient Egypt Art History Australia Book Blogger Bookliterati Book Recommendation Book review Christmas Contemporary Fiction Crime Del Rey Doubleday Emmeline Kirby and Gregory Longdon Mystery Fantasy Festive Reads Florence Folklore Harper Collins Historical Fiction History Independently Published Italy Karen Swan Literary Fiction Magic Mantle Books Melville House Murder Mystery Myth Orenda Books Pan Macmillan Penguin Random House Psychological thriller Romance Secrets Simon and Schuster Supernatural Suspense thriller Venice Women's Fiction Zaffre Books Book title Search for: Search Search Recent Comments What do you have left, if you only ever loved one man, with everything you possess? And how do you prove that you ever lived at all, if all you can point to, is a painting in a gallery? A new century is dawning. Vienna is at its zenith, an opulent, extravagant city teeming with art, music and radical ideas. It is a place where anything seems possible... Edith and Adele are sisters, the daughters of a wealthy bourgeois industrialist. They are expected to follow the rules, to marry well, and produce children. Gertrude is in thrall to her flamboyant older brother. Marked by a traumatic childhood, she envies the freedom he so readily commands. Vally was born into poverty but is making her way in the world as a model for the eminent artist Gustav Klimt. Through the perspective of Adele Harms, Gertrude Schiele, Vally Neuzil, and Edith Harms (Schiele), we get to learn some historical facts splashed with bits of fiction of what these women might have been like and felt and how they influenced Egon and his art.