Tag: literary fiction

Book Review – Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton @FairlightBooks

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About the Book

Front cover of Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton featuring image of Vermeer's painting of the same name

‘You will live beyond one lifetime and beyond even two in the painting he makes of you.’

In the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, there is a painting called Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. Each day a man visits to gaze at it. He is irresistibly drawn to it. Obsessed by it. He studies the painting, in search of resolutions to his past and present loves, and the Woman in Blue studies him back. For there is more to the Woman in Blue than any of the men who gaze upon her realise. She has a story of her own to tell.

Format: Paperback (144 pages) Publisher: Fairlight Books
Publication date: 20th February 2025 Genre: Fiction

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My Review

I recently read the author’s book Blue Postcards, which was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2021, and enjoyed its ingenious and unconventional structure: 500 numbered paragraphs each including the word ‘blue’. The author continues his fascination (I hesitate to call it obsession) with the colour blue in this his latest book which is inspired by a painting by Vermeer that hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Each day a man visits the Rijksmuseum to gaze at the painting Woman in Blue Reading a Letter by Vermeer. Only that painting, and for hours on end. Initially we don’t know quite why, and we’re not alone because the museum attendants wonder too. So does his wife. Does the model remind him of someone? Is it just a distraction from other aspects of his life? Is he seeking inspiration for a book? It did our author, after all.

The man’s fascination with the picture and the long hours he spends looking at it, observing it, wondering about small details in it – the significance of the map on the wall behind her or the box of pearls on the table – has an intensity to it, a meditative quality that draws you in. How often nowadays do we sit and look at anything for longer than a few minutes?

Gradually it becomes clear that it is the Woman in Blue who possesses most control over events and that this is not entirely coincidental. She is not the passive artist’s model we might have first thought. In the author’s imagination, her influence extends beyond the picture. She can sense the thoughts of the man viewing the picture, is amused by how often his ideas are wrong and luxuriates in her ability to captivate him as she has Vermeer. She even becomes a little impatient at his attempts to make sense of things in the painting, to discover the artist’s intentions. ‘Just look, like you did at the start,’ she says.’

The book explores the boundaries between reality and illusion in art. The man notes the Woman in Blue casts no shadow on the wall behind her as she would in real life. He recalls reading that in another of Vermeer’s paintings, View of Delft, he shifted buildings a little to suit his composition. The blue bedjacket the Woman in Blue is wearing gives the impression of a gently swollen belly but she is not pregnant. It is Vermeer who, at that moment, is in the process of bringing things into the world: a painting and a child by his wife.

We also see how a painting can live on in other forms, some quite crude or mundane. For example, the man notes that it’s possible to purchase a tea towel with the Woman in Blue on it in the museum gift shop although he’s perturbed that the blue is not exactly the same as that in the painting and fears it will fade after multiple washes.

For a short book, Woman in Blue contains a remarkable number of ideas and I suspect more will come to you, as they did to me, once you’ve finished reading it. Predictably, the book brought to mind Tracy Chevalier’s novel The Girl with the Pearl Earring, also inspired by a Vermeer painting. Playfully, the author has the man complain Vermeer has painted the Woman in Blue’s hair in such a way that it conceals her ear and that ‘had it not he might have painted a wonderful pearl earring there’.

In addition to its inclusion in the title, the author manages to sneak in a few more references to the colour blue. (I like to think this was for the amusement of those who’ve read Blue Postcards.) For example, the man writes a letter to the Woman in Blue on blue lined paper and is particular in using a blue pen. He buys his wife a blue Delft tile with a blue tulip on it.

Woman In Blue is a delightfully clever novel that will make you think about the relationship between artist, subject and viewer next time you visit a gallery or look at a painting.

‘That is what great art does: it allows the viewer in and the viewer brings something new to the painting, something of their own story and life and love.’

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Fairlight Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Thought-provoking, playful, contemplative

About the Author

Author Douglas Bruton

Douglas Bruton is the author of five previous novels: The Chess Piece Magician (2009), Mrs Winchester’s Gun Club (2019), Blue Postcards (2021), With or Without Angels (2022) and Hope Never Knew Horizon (2024). Blue Postcards was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2021. His short fiction has appeared in various publications including Northwords Now, New Writing Scotland, Aesthetica, The Fiction Desk and the Irish Literary Review, and has won competitions including Fish and the Neil Gunn Prize. He lives in the Scottish Borders. (Photo: Publisher author page)

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Book Review – The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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About the Book

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.

Format: Audiobook (22h 4m) Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 30th September 2010 [1992] Genre: Thriller

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My Review

I first read this when it was published in paperback in 1993 but I was given an opportunity to reread it when it was picked by my book club as a change from the new releases we usually choose. Like me, many book club members came along clutching their own battered copies of the book. I decided to listen to the audiobook as it is narrated by the author. I have to say she does a brilliant job of bringing the characters she created to life.

The Secret History is a long book and it isn’t until about the half way point that the murder (which we know pretty much from the beginning will take place) occurs. But somehow the author manages to keep the tension going through those first three hundred pages as our narrator, Richard Papen, describes the events that lead up to the murder and then its aftermath.

Newly arrived at Hampden College in Vermont, Richard becomes part of a group of students studying Ancient Greek under the tutelage of classics professor Julian Morrow, who limits enrolment in his classes to a hand-picked coterie. Unlike Richard, the other five – Henry, Francis, Bunny and twins, Camilla and Charles – come from privileged backgrounds. Richard is dazzled by them but finds himself amongst people who, unlike him, don’t have to worry where the next dollar will come from. This results in him having to tell elaborate lies about his background and hide his penury, even if that means nearly freezing to death during a Vermont winter. Bunny, although his parents are rich, has been cast adrift as a kind of challenge to make his own way in the world, his response to which is to sponge off his well-off friends.

This is not a story where you find yourself rooting for any of the characters; they’re all pretty unlikeable, including the victim. If I had to pick the least unlikeable it would be Francis who does act most like a true friend to Richard. The group indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle of wild parties, drink and drugs. Not much study seems to go on. Their willingness to see themselves as outside normal moral boundaries results in a series of shocking events which finds them increasingly needing to lie and deceive others. Richard willingly goes along with them because of his desire to remain part of the group. The author shows us how their actions leave them, in different ways, irrevocably damaged by the act of having taken another’s life.

Immersive is an often overused word but it’s fully justifiable as a description of The Secret History, the book which effectively gave rise to the dark academia literary genre.

In three words: Dark, suspenseful, compelling
Try something similar: If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

About the Author

Author Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is an American author who has achieved critical and public acclaim for her novels, which have been published in forty languages. In 2003 she received the WH Smith Literary Award for her novel, The Little Friend, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch. (Photo: Goodreads)