A double portrait of hidden creativity set in swinging 60s London and civil war Spain from a writer who cannot be faulted for ambition
The imaginative boldness that distinguished Jessie Burton’s 2014 debut novel, The Miniaturist, earned her critical raves and an international bestseller: her fans will be eager to know if she can reprise the trick with her follow-up. Having recreated the stiff-necked puritan society of 17th-century Amsterdam in her first book, in The Muse Burton has once again done the hard yards of research to reimagine not one but two distinct eras of the 20th century, and fused them to an intricate story of imposture. This is not a writer who can be faulted for ambition.
In the summer of 1967 a young woman named Odelle Bastien applies for a job at the Skelton Institute, a discreetly upmarket gallery in St James’s. Odelle, having arrived in London from Trinidad five years earlier, has put her dreams of being a writer on hold while she finds her feet and tends to other people’s, selling shoes at Dolcis. The Skelton’s eccentric co-director, Marjorie Quick, spots the young woman’s potential and offers her £10 a week as a typist – riches! Too bad about the gallery’s snitty receptionist Pamela: “She knew no other blacks, she told me on the Thursday of that first week. When I said that I hadn’t known any either by that name till I came here, she looked completely blank.” At her friend Cynth’s wedding reception, Odelle meets Lawrie, who has recently inherited a painting of a lion he thinks might be worth something. At the Skelton they’re very interested, though on glimpsing the picture Miss Quick looks as though she’s seen a ghost.
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