As she is leaving, she touches a stack of tall, brittle firewood, the only type that can be sourced during this sad war, and imagines the flames that will consume it, given time. They promise so much: life giving warmth, and destruction.

A line that is so terribly fine.

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Egon Schiele, the artist who drew women in states of undress, in erotic poses, who were passed over for his art and who were his flames in every sense of the meaning and who were in many ways undone by him.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is historical fiction – there are elements that are correct but most is imagined from the woman’s point of view because these were not recorded. The only thing left of them is their portraits and so we must build the bridges between them and this is exactly what Hadyock has done in this book.

She has taken four of his muses: sisters Edith and Adele, Gertude his own sister and Vally a woman he met through his mentor Gustav Klimt – and told us their story in relation to Schiele. Each of them a strong flame that was eventually burnt out by Schiele.

Ah, but once you’ve fallen for Egon Schiele, do you ever recover?

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The story starts in the present day with Eva riding her bike into an old woman on the street who turns out to be Adele. She was rushing to look at a poster advertising a Schiele exhibition that used an image of her sister to promote the event. Eva takes her out of hospital, where she ends up after the crash, and together they visit the paintings and the muses’ stories are revealed.

Several things are hinted at in the book. Did Schiele have an incestuous relationship with his sister Gertie? He sketched and painted her in many positions that look sexual, as he did with other women, but he also had sex with his other models. He started drawing his sister naked when she was quite young and knew that he needed to hide the drawings. Gertie was, however, one of the muses that found love with another man and had children of her own although she always pined for her close relationship with Egon.

In this portrait, Gertrude has a dreamy, almost wistful, knowing look, but like many of his portraits is staring straight at Schiele.

Schiele befriends two young women who live over the road from him and can watch him from their front window. Adele is a woman who has already shown that she has delusions where men and relationships are invovled and she becomes obsessed with Schiele – reading into his actions that it is only a matter of time before he asks for her hand in marriage. He does indeed ask for a hand in marriage but it is not Adele’s but her younger sister Edith’s. This does send Adele over the edge, it is a betrayal in her mind by both and she never forgives her sister until the end. What isn’t clear is whether Adele had a relationship with Schiele when she was modelling for him once he was married to Edith.

The book has four main sections, each one devoted to a muse and each story overlapping with the next one in some way. By focusing on each woman, one at a time, we are able to fully explore their time with Schiele and imagine their hopes and feelings. It makes for a more rounded image of each woman and the toll taken when working with such a ‘talent’ as we are constantly reminded whether he was seen as a portraitist or pornographer.