The climax also has a contemporary resonance that Haydock cannot have anticipated when she embarked on the project. The first world war ends, the empire collapses, women gradually embark on a precarious liberation. Haydock ensures that these women emerge from behind Schiele’s gaze, and she also uses them to illuminate a period of seismic change. As a feminist reworking of Schiele’s story that also redresses historical injustice, this novel is a glorious successĪs a feminist reworking of Schiele’s story, and as an exercise in redressing historical injustice, this novel is a glorious success. That union is usually explained in terms of social advantage, but Haydock depicts Edith as more than a trophy bride. When Schiele is arrested for allegedly showing indecent images to children and “kidnapping” a neighbour’s daughter, Tatjana, who in the book is 14, Walburga stands by him. The novel then moves on to Walburga, whom Schiele meets through Gustav Klimt. By contrast, the young Schiele is shown as a rebel, already at odds with his family and the world. Schiele’s father was a provincial stationmaster, a strict and conventional man who clung to his small status even as syphilis gradually destroyed his mind. The second section belongs to Gerti and recounts Schiele’s childhood. Through her eyes we discover the glamour of Secession Vienna, a city “forging a path of progress and change into this new, promising, unblemished century”. The book is divided into four sections and begins with bold but delusional Adele, who is determined to avoid “the petty existence” she ascribes to her mother and sister. She focuses on four women: Gerti, Schiele’s possessive and protective sister Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, who was his model and lover and the sisters Adele and Edith Harms, who live on the same street as Schiele and watch him from their window. Who were these women and what role did they play in Schiele’s life and his art? These are questions Sophie Haydock sets out to answer in her ambitious and intriguing debut novel.
They raise unsettling questions of voyeurism and exploitation. Some are elusive, quaint or decorative, but many are sexual, powerful, provocative. E gon Schiele’s images of women are challenging and varied.
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