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Back in 2014, Jessie Burton made international waves with her highly- acclaimed debut novel, The Miniaturist. That novel, set in 17th century Amsterdam, tackled themes of self-confidence and creativity set against a period backdrop realised with incredible, painstaking detail and clarity. Once more, in The Muse, Burton tackles these same themes, this time in two separate, but still wholly realised settings: 1960s England, and Spain during the Civil War. While one could criticise the similarity in structure of the two novels, the simultaneous unfolding of the two linked timelines and the interesting characters through which they are revealed provide enough difference from The Miniaturist to make this a book worth judging on its own merit.
The novel follows two women, the more intriguing being Odelle Bastien, an immigrant from Trinidad who came to England to further her writing career. Bastien’s experiences of the English people, of racism and of attempting to forge a career in the 1960s while being both black and female, are by far the more engaging portions of The Muse. Her colourful descriptions of people she meets are self-contained vignettes as detailed as paintings:
“The name … conjured up a quintessential, intimidating Englishness, Saville Rowers in Whitehall clubs; eat the steak, hunt the fox. Three piece suit, pomaded hair, great-uncle Henry’s golden watch. I would see him round the corridor, and he would look surprised every time. It was as if I had walked in off the street, naked. We studied men like him at school – protected gentlemen, white gentlemen, who picked up pens and wrote the world for the rest of us to read.” Burton’s beautifully layered and metered prose is easily a highlight of The Muse, carrying the novel when the sometimes haphazardly constructed plot fails to suspend disbelief in a series of coincidental connections that attempt to link the two tales together.
The other half of the novel – centred around the repressed but extremely gifted young artist Olive Schloss – also revolves around the themes of self-worth as an artist, and sexism in the creative industries. Schloss’ father, Harold, is a respected art dealer who refuses to even consider the possibility, despite mounting evidence, that his own daughter is such a gifted artist. “Her father always said that of course, women could pick up a paintbrush and paint, but the fact was, they didn’t make good artists… 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?” Schloss lives in a world where she is surrounded by untalented people filled with false confidence, while she herself struggles to hold her head up and claim her art as her own – despite her huge talent. Schloss’ arc is interesting, and Burton’s rendering of a Spain teetering on the edge of war and insanity, a country brooding with pregnant agitation, is accurate and powerful. However, her character is far less engaging than the fiery Bastien, whose inner thoughts reveal a creative passion and a level of innate self-belief that Schloss never comes close to holding. For this reason, whenever to novel travels back in time to the 1930s, it can feel like a drag; a B-side alternative to Bastien’s tale, with the same themes but none of the warmth and likeable personality. While the 1930s arc is competent and descriptive, there is nothing in these sections to make the reader crave more. Apart from a few scenes, they are merely passable.
The one big exception to this, and nod to the overwhelming success of The Miniaturist, is Schloss talking about the restrictive dangers of artistic success and a public image: “I’ve seen what success does to people, Isaac, how it separates them from their creative impulse, how it paralyses them. They can’t make anything that isn’t a horrible replica of what came before, because everyone has opinions on who they are and how they should be.”
This excerpt, in which Burton’s voice can be heard most clearly, can be applied to a less intense degree to The Muse as a whole. While this isn’t an awful, mutant aberration of a spiritual sequel to The Miniaturist, it does suffer by way of being at times nothing more than a thematic effigy; a faithful, albeit competent, recreation of the formula that made her debut novel such a widespread success. This is a novel that tries too hard to emulate what came before it, and this hangs over the prose, no matter how beautifully it’s written.
