Description: Bestselling author Jessie Burton delivers! This novel weaves together two stories: one set in 1967 in London and the other in 1936 Spain, just before the Spanish civil war. Odelle Bastien is a new immigrant from the Caribbean and lands a job as a typist at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art. Her boss Marjorie Quick is a bit like the boss in The Devil Wears Prada. Odelle’s boyfriend inherits a painting that is rumoured to be the work of a Spanish artist who thrilled the art market in the 1930s but then disappeared. The story running in parallel to Odelle’s is that of the painting’s creator. This is a great novel about women in art, and modern working women. Peggy Guggenheim makes a brief appearance as well.
Favourite Moment: The dialogue scenes between Odelle and her friend Cynth are really fun, but so is Odelle’s commentary and observations about her new country and workplace.
Quote: For nearly the whole of the first week the only person I spoke to was a girl called Pamela Rudge. Pamela was the receptionist, and she would always be there, reading the Express at her counter, elbows on teh wood, gum poppin gin her mouth before the big fellers showed and she threw it in the bin. With a hint of suffering, as if she’d been interrupted in a difficult activity, she would fold the newspaper like a piece of delicate lace and loop up at me. ‘Good morning, Adele,’ she’d say. Twenty-one years old, Pam Rudge was the latest in a long line of East-Enders, an immobile beehive lacquered to her head and enough black eyeliner to feed five pharaohs.