THE FLAMES: Sophie Haydock breathes electrifying life into Egon Schiele – and his muses

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.