Woman in Blue

LoveReading Says

At once delicate and direct, Douglas Bruton’s Woman in Blue explores the potent power of art, of observing and being observed, and the nature of love and inexplicable connections.

In this case, the subtle, tender story unveils the connection between a man who spends his days in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, obsessively gazing at a 17th-century painting of a Woman in Blue, and the subject of said painting. 

“There is almost something transgressive in watching her”, he admits while transfixed to Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, but both the watcher and the watched are, in fact, observing each other, with chapters alternating between A Man in Amsterdam and the Woman in Blue — he a present-day writer dislocated from his wife, she a young woman with a story to tell in relation to the artist she sat for some centuries ago. “He loves me and he thinks I don’t know, but I know men”, remarks the Woman in Blue of the Man in Amsterdam, and through their unspoken dialogue, we’re drawn into her unexcepted, stirring story. 

At one point, the Man in Amsterdam obverses, ‘“You don’t need to shout to be heard is what the painting seems to say”, which also sums up the magic of this short novel — its power comes from drawing readers to slow down and listen close, to focus and think. In the words of the Man in Amsterdam, “We linger. We take the time” — such is the purpose and power of art, and Woman in Blue.

Joanne Owen

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