Sophie Haydock’s debut novel The Flames is an electrifying blend of fact and fiction: a well-researched look at Egon Schiele, Viennese painter and protege of Gustav Klimt. His groundbreaking – and erotic – nude portraits were considered scandalous, earning him an unwanted reputation as a pornographer, yet in time he has been elevated to the status of Austria’s most esteemed painter.
The Flames provides a glimpse into Schiele’s modest background and family, likewise the driven artist’s single-minded passion and ambitions for art. Haydock breathes life into four women, his muses: imagining their relationships with Schiele and the dynamics between them where their lives cross. There are the privileged bourgeois sisters, Adele and the younger Edith; Gertie is Egon’s possessive and jealous younger sister, a subject of his drawings since childhood. Vally, from an impoverished background, was the painter’s long-term partner: there when everyone else deserts him, but never seen by Schiele as a serious marriage prospect.
How does Egon emerge from The Flames? Not well, I’d suggest: certainly, no-one escapes an encounter with him unscathed. A captivating read that had me caught up in the time and the place – the life of Schiele and the muses that inspired his art, the tangled mess of passions, the love, loss, grief, the lies, poison and betrayal.
The Flames, Sophie Haydock (Transworld)
Price: £16.99. Info: here
words BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS
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