Fascinating premise (love researching art/dutch golden age), not too hooked on the execution though? Took me quite a while to just get through this novella

A man becomes obsessed with Vermeer’s painting Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and visits her daily, just to stand or sit in front of her and gaze his fill. What he can’t know is that the Woman is aware of him, and in alternating chapters we are privy not only to his thoughts and feelings but hers too, from the time when she posed for the artist. It’s an imaginative and original reflection on art and love, a quiet book, in which the two timelines are expertly and seamlessly intertwined, and although we cannot of course know anything about the model and how the painting came about, Bruton’s reimagining is convincing and eloquent. It’s a beautifully written novella, calm and thoughtful, cleverly constructed; an insightful exploration of art and the viewer, and I found myself completely caught up in the narrative. My only quibble is the lesbian sub-plot which I found too contrived, possibly only included to chime with contemporary concerns and which adds nothing to the story. Without that this would have been a strong 5* read for me.

A man goes almost daily to look at Vermeer's painting, and the woman in the painting observes him back while telling us the story of how it was painted. The whole thing is quite surreal as parallels are drawn and redrawn between the woman and the man living hundreds of years later, but in another way it was two interwoven stories. I wasn't really sure how I felt about the ending but I enjoyed the book in the main and it was very cleverly done. I'm sure I missed some things and I'd like to read it again to hopefully pick up new themes.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for kindly providing me with an advance copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I was sent a copy of Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton to read and review by NetGalley. I would call this a quiet and thoughtful book. I enjoyed it very much. The story was imaginative and insightful and the author managed to capture the essence of both timelines. I love reading books with art at the heart of them and this one was no exception.

I found WOMAN IN BLUE to be incredibly poignant and profound. I was particularly struck by how the story came to be, specifically in how the author gently and sensitively excavates the painting to come up with such a wonderful, vivid and unique novella.

Douglas Bruton’s Woman in Blue is a novel as delicate and mesmerizing as the Vermeer painting that inspires it. The story follows a man who becomes captivated by Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, visiting the painting daily at the Rijksmuseum and slowly falling in love with its subject. Alongside his obsession, a second narrative unfolds—that of Angelieke, the woman in the painting, imagined into existence by the writer’s mind. Angelieke, living with her mother and a young woman named Katrijn, dreams of meeting Vermeer and becoming his muse. But her story is not confined to the past; she also engages in a strikingly intimate dialogue with the man who watches her from centuries away.

Bruton’s prose mirrors the quiet grace of Vermeer’s art. The novel is beautifully written, infused with an atmosphere of reverence and longing. It explores themes of artistic inspiration, the power of observation, and the blurred lines between reality and fiction. Reading Woman in Blue is an immersive experience, much like standing before the painting itself—silent yet profound, rich with depth beneath its surface stillness.

A dreamlike story told from two points of view. One is narrated by a writer who visits Vermeer’s ‘Woman in Blue reading a Letter’ in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The other thread is the girl in the painting who talks both about the man looking at her and also the story of how the painting cam to be in 1663. A short novel about art and creation, quiet, love, thoughts and memory.

This is short, and definitely not a plot-heavy book, but the writing is stunning. The idea of art in a conversational sense really opened my eyes to how we interact with it. Not just what we see in the composition, but how we feel.

Beautifully written, highly recommend!


Thank you to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

Publishing date: 20.02.2025 (DD/MM/YYYY)
Thank you to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

TLDR: A man visits a painting every day and falls in love with the subject and the art itself. On the other side, the subject internally converses with her admirer and reflects on the time she was posing for said painting. 3 stars

An unnamed man visits a painting in his local museum every day. He falls in love with the painting, more specifically the subject. On the other side the subject converses with him, reflects on his affections, and wonders if he truly loves her. She also tells us of the time she was posing for the painting, and the relationship she had with the artist.

The characters here are deeply flawed and hypocritical. The men talk about love, but they love two people. The woman also speaks of love, but more superficially or like something she can use. No one was directly likeable or dislikeable, more like people I simply disagree with.

Pacing is strange. I have no concept of how much time has actually passed, or exactly when the different POV's take place. It is a slow paced book writing style-wise, but I think it is moving quickly timeline-wise.

The story itself is strange and obsessive. These people are all obsessed with each other, but the focus is mostly on the woman. So it is a character centric story. Not much happens, really.

I did not enjoy the way they talked about the woman. "Out of shape", "distant", they way they phrased whether or not she was pregnant. It felt icky. It felt like they viewed her as a lesser being.
The woman herself also has a few problems. A spine first of all would be nice. Something happens where she is disgusted, but does nothing. She seems so conflicted with the things she does and can't make up her mind properly. There is also a lot of flip-flopping of "loves me, loves me not". I found it a little tiring and juvenile.

The writing is beautiful, but maybe a little boring and "compact". Separating it a little more would make for a more comfortable reading experience. That might just be me.

Audience is adult. Targeted at people who enjoy themes of obsession, moral dilemmas, and a little surrealism.

I am giving this 3 stars. I enjoyed the premise, but not the execution. It was a little hard to read with the blocks of text on every page. But if it seems interesting I would recommend you try it.

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.’

'The Woman in Blue' is a quietly fascinating novella inspired by Johannes Vermeer's 17th Century painting 'Woman in Blue Reading a Letter'. We alternate between the perspectives of a male writer who visits the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam every day to look at this painting, and Lieke, the woman in blue herself, who reflects on both her original painter and her present-day viewer.

The book is full of intriguing parallels: Vermeer and the writer both keep elements of their relationship with Lieke secret from their wives (and Lieke keeps secrets of her own), while the contents of the letter Lieke is reading remain a source of mystery. Through these two voices (and a prologue and an epilogue describing the artist's thoughts), Douglas Bruton invites us to reflect on the complex relationships that can exist between artist, subject and viewers, and the different forms that love and intimacy can take. It is also a novella which celebrates slow, careful attentiveness - after reading it, many readers will want nothing more than to go and sit in front of the same painting every day.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I really enjoyed this unusual book. Told from two different viewpoints one of which is a woman in a painting. This may seem a strange technique but it is one that really works. The book is even more intriguing as the painting actually exists!

Listen, shhhhh, slow down, take a breath, see, quiet..........................................

"You don't need to shout to be heard"

Bruton has the capacity of slowing down the mad gyrations of the world around us, getting us to focus on the moment and to look and furthermore to see. In this one he looks at Vermeer's ability to catch the moment and have us standing there looking at the moment, quietly, intensely, caught like a moth to a flame.

Looking is a complicated process, how to be able to see, we sometimes have to divest ourselves of all our filters and so catch that moment as it is and then at the same time wondering at all those filters we had to discard and examining once again if we need all of them or if we mix up our list of filters or do without some or add more.

Placing words to a moment confines the moment to those words when the moment was much more or much less or both at the same time or infinitesimal shades of more or less. So saying that reading this took me to a secret quiet place of hidden joy would be saying too much or at the same time too little.

Another Bruton than had me highlighting like mad. If it had been a paper book, it would have shone like a little sun with all the highlighting I did.

The Woman in Blue is a personal, poignant and reflective story about art and love.

This was the first work I’ve read by Bruton and I was captivated, finishing the book in one sitting. The story is beautifully told and intricate, with a powerful connection between the two protagonists, despite being centuries apart. Time becomes irrelevant as they watch each other and think, ponder and find their own way out of the moment in which they have connected.

There’s significant motifs and themes woven into the story, such as blue and the Mother Mary. These tie in with themes of adoration and worship, displayed by both Vermeer and the man in Amsterdam. The colour blue and gold bursts from the pages and becomes the tone of the novel.

This was deeply compelling and a beautifully told moment in time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Fairlight books for the ARC.

This novella explores the intimacy between the artist and his model as well as the one between the viewer of a painting and the painting itself. The painting in question is Vermeer’s Woman in Blue (1663, exhibited in Amsterdam’s Riksmuseum), over which an unnamed man starts obsessing. He visits the Woman in Blue every day and falls in love not just with the picture but with its very subject.

Alternating chapters create a kind of dialog between the Woman in Blue and her regular visitor: She reminisces about the time she was modelling for Vermeer but also engages directly with her daily caller who she suspects to be in love with her. He, on the other hand, finds new ways of intrigue and admiration every day, which result in an intimacy that can only be found between lovers.

The Woman in Blue – as a model for Vermeer and as the subject of a painting now exposed to the gaze of not only its creator but anyone, is somehow degraded to a mere object – so I quite like the idea that she becomes the active agent, building a relationship with the viewer. I also thought however, that it was a pity that she didn’t really have much to say and her dialog with him borders on dull. Her main concern centres around the question whether she is still being loved – yet the exploration of love remains very superficial. Mind you, I found the deliberations of her visitor even more lacklustre, if not banal.

Although I really liked the concept of the book, its execution didn’t really resonate with me.
I am grateful to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Woman in Blue is a study in patience of love and art. Like his previous novel, Blue Postcards, Bruton’s main theme in this slim novel focuses on how one piece of art, in this case, the painting of the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter by Vermeer, can elicit and offer something different to each viewer, and the viewer often finds himself ‘becoming one with the painting’.

This is something that happens to our man from Amsterdam, who finds himself transfixed by the painting located in the gallery of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Daily, he visits the spot, often to the amusement and much talk of the security guards there, to find himself spellbound by the woman in the painting. Bruton’s description of the man’s adoration for the painting ranges from espousing the beauty of the colour and contrast, to the composition, to describing elements of the painting — the map on the wall, her blue bedjacket, the chairs, the box with the pearls half hidden, and the letter.

I found the passages where the man from Amsterdam drove himself to perplexity, unaware of what the contents of the letter were. Were they from her lover? What was written on it? Was it a new letter or an old one, if one judges by the creases on the letter. You can almost hear him pleading to the lady in the painting to answer them.

And, she does. Bruton’s book is set in two different timelines — the contemporary Amsterdam and then 17th century Delft, as the painting is being painted in real time, and also narrated by Angelieke, the lady in the painting. In the modern day, Angelieke is aware that she is a painting and that people fall in love with Vermeer’s version of her, and not her. She is conscious of the many eyes on her, especially of our man from Amsterdam, and finds him amusing.

The to-and-fro between these two narrators, as their stories unravel, almost parallel in complications of love; almost a dream-like state of revelation, where the intersection of the art, the artist, the muse, and the viewer revel in a state of adoration and vulnerability.

Bruton’s novel might be short, but there are layers in this book that slowly reveal themselves, a demonstration of his prowess of showing how experiencing art can sometimes help us achieve the closure we need, just like our man in Amsterdam, who finds his past and present love in the face of Angelieke, as Angelieke reminisces about her intense period with Vermeer, learning that a muse and lover aren’t intertwined.

My only fault with this novel was through the halfway mark, where I felt the story had reached its crescendo, and now we were waiting for events to unfold, but had to wait. The animation of being, the absence of movements in the chapters instead of drawing one away from the story, draws one in…it is almost like that early morning dream, where you know you are aware that you are dreaming, and yet, you don’t want it to end.

The book is a mastery in showing how art can and will elicit a response that is sometime so emotional and visceral, that it can force one to turn on themselves.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for the ARC.

Enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. Written very nicely and the characters were well fleshed out.

There’s clearly something about the paintings of Johannes Vermeer that inspires novelists; first, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and now Douglas Bruton’s excellent Woman in Blue. This is the second of Bruton’s books I’ve read, the first being 2021’s Blue Postcards and apart from the shared word in the title (Bruton certainly seems to like the colour blue!) and the shared theme of art and artists, I found this one very different in style and structure.

The novel begins in the present day with our unnamed narrator, referred to only as ‘a man in Amsterdam’, visiting the Rijksmuseum to look at a painting. Just one painting, which he has become so obsessed with that he barely notices any of the others. The painting is Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and the narrator returns to the museum day after day to study the colours and the composition, but most of all just to spend time in the woman in blue’s company and to imagine the human being who inspired the picture. He’s transfixed by this particular painting for its own sake, but also because the woman reminds him in subtle ways of both his wife and another woman he once loved.

In 17th century Delft, we meet the woman in blue herself – or rather, the young woman who sits for Vermeer as he paints her portrait. Her chapters alternate with the present day ones, slowly building up a history of the woman in blue, her life in Delft and her relationship with the artist. In reality, the true identity of the sitter has never been confirmed (Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, has been suggested as a likely candidate, but it seems there’s no actual evidence to prove it), so Bruton has the freedom to create his own fictional story for the woman, whom he names Angelieke.

Although the book is set in two different time periods and narrated by two different characters, the lines dividing the two are blurred. Angelieke is a real woman in 1663, but in the modern day sections, she’s aware that she is a painting in a museum and that the male narrator comes to see her every day. She looks forward to his visits and feels a connection with him, just as he feels one with her. This is not the first novel to give a painting a mind of its own (I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons does the same and I’m sure there must be others) but I really liked the way Bruton handles that element of the story, giving it a dreamlike feel and merging the two narratives so that they don’t feel too separate or disconnected.

With it being a real painting rather than a fictional one, it’s easy to google it so you can refer to the picture itself as you read. The narrator’s observations, made during his repeated viewings, helped me to see things in the painting that I probably wouldn’t have noticed for myself. With each chapter, he finds new details to study and focus on – the map on the wall, the letter in the woman’s hand, the blue bed jacket she’s wearing and the question of whether or not she could be pregnant. At times, Bruton returns to a theme he also touched on in Blue Postcards: the idea that a painting offers something different to each individual who views it and that the viewers themselves can almost ‘become’ part of the painting:

"What I like about the painting – one of the many things I like – is how cleverly the artist has included me in it and made me complicit in the looking. It is an intimate and private moment and Vermeer intrudes on it without at all breaking it, and we – Vermeer and me – stand silent, breath held, just looking at this young woman turned in on herself."

For a short book – a novella at 144 pages – there’s so much packed into it that I’ve probably only scratched the surface in this review. I would recommend Woman in Blue to anyone who loves art, but even if you don’t, there’s still a lot here to enjoy.

This book is a quiet novella focused on one single painting by Dutch Golden Age painter, Johannes Vermeer, displayed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Wikipedia tells me that it has been painted around 1662 or 1665, which confirms that not much is known for sure about this painting, and even less about this young woman dressed in a wide blue mantle. Vermeer has always had a mysterious reputation, and his paintings are contemplative, no wonder that a writer would imagine a whole story based on this painting!

It’s not the first time that a Vermeer painting is the central material for a novel. The bestselling Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, published in 1999 (!) was also imagining the story of the woman whose image we are so familiar with, but without any other information. So what’s different about this one?

The chapters alternate between the visitor, an unnamed male writer who comes to the museum daily to look at this picture, and the woman in blue. She is both of her time and within the painting, aware of the interest she creates by the museum visitors. That little touch of magical realism creates a memorable impression on the reader. It’s a bit like in Harry Potter when the characters in the paintings in the hallways can interact with the people passing by.

The writer falls in love more and more with her at each visit. She, on the other hand, tells how she met the painter who offered to paint her. She is young but not naive. She has her own personality and intentions. She observes Vermeer as much as he looks at her.

I have a few minor reservations about the story, one being that the intense relationship between Vermeer and the young woman develops while his wife is pregnant, which seems all too convenient; and the second one about the ending of the 17th century story, which adds a twist that doesn’t really bring anything to the core story.

People who will read it will understand my allusions (and maybe disagree with me) but those reservations haven’t spoilt my reading experience, by far. On the contrary, I hope that a lot of people will read the story!

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book for review consideration.

Beautiful.

I should just leave my review there because there's really not much else I can say.

Woman in Blue centres around a writer who has become besotted with the painting by Vermeer. He visits her in the Rijksmuseum every day, falling in love little more each time.

The other strand is the story of Angelieke (who is a fiction of the writer's mind), the woman in the painting. She lives with her mother and another young woman called Katrijn. She and Katrijn plan for her to meet Vermeer and become his latest muse.

The woman in the painting not only has a dialogue with Vermeer but also with the writer who visits her daily.

I'm not going to be able to do this book justice. It has the same quiet beauty as the painting itself. The writing is exquisite. I read this book in two sittings. I did not want to put it down. I want to read it again immediately.

It is stunningly simple and I can't praise it highly enough. Very highly recommended.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Fairlight Books for the advance review copy. Very much appreciated. I want to read everything this author has written.