Novella a Day in May 2026 – No.1

/ madamebibilophile

Douglas Bruton is a relatively recent discovery for me, thanks to the blogosphere. It was only last year that I read With or Without Angels, Hope Never Knew Horizon, and Blue Postcards. His writing weaves real lives with fiction and is strongly concerned with art, human relationships, and the quality of silence that exists in these. He is sparsely poetic, unpretentious and experimental without being alienating. I knew I would start NADIM this year with his 2025 novella, Woman in Blue published by Fairlight Books.

The novella takes its title from the seventeenth century portrait by Vermeer of the same name, sometimes also called Woman Reading a Letter, housed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The unnamed male narrator is a writer living in the city with his wife. He visits the museum daily to gaze at the painting.

“There is almost no sound in the gallery, for I am the first. Then it is just the Woman in Blue and me, and I come upon her as though I have turned a corner in a house and seen her through an open door.”

He becomes obsessed with the painting, and yet somehow it isn’t pitiful or creepy. He is trying to understand, and the enigma of the painting means he is always fully aware of the limits of his understanding.

“Things belong in their own time and space and taking them out of that time changes everything.”

His chapters are interspersed with the chapters of Angelieke, the model for the painting. As she describes the process of being painted by Vermeer, she also exists metaphysically, able to comment on all the people who come to visit her portrait, including the other narrator.

If this sounds overly whimsical, it really isn’t. I think this is due to Bruton giving Angelieke the most grounded, earthy voice in the novel. She is from a poor family, she needs money. She sees Vermeer and knows how to attract him. She holds the most agency and the most knowledge. This means that while she is necessarily objectified by Vermeer in the act of painting, and by the narrator in the act of viewing, she is never diminished.

Bruton carefully balances plot driven aspects around the male narrator and his wife, and Angelieke and her family, with wider considerations about viewpoint, acts of art, acts of love.

I think ‘tender’ is always the word I arrive at when writing about Bruton, and Woman in Blue is no exception. But I think I could also mention his elegance and beauty. Both these qualities can be distancing, but in his writing they never are. He closely examines lives and evokes them with such care and compassion that we are always placed alongside.

“Watching the woman in blue reading her letter it is as though I stop existing and I’m just the pared-back pure act of looking.”

26 thoughts on “Novella a Day in May 2026 – No.1”

  2. Simon Thomas picked Blue Postcards as one of his best books of the year, and “tender” sounds nice, something you don’t apply to too many writers these days. I guess I’m going to have to track down some Bruton.

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  4. A great start! I have this one and another Bruton in my pile of possibles – like you and other bloggers, he has been such a brilliant discovery for me in the past year or so. This one sounds inventive and beautiful, like the other two I’ve read by him.

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  6. After starting with Hope Never Knew Horizon last year, I went on to read Blue Postcards, With or Without Angels and Woman in Blue almost one after the other. I love Bruton’s writing and the way he weaves fact, fiction and art together in such a clever way so that you learn about a piece of art, social history and also care very much about the characters.

    Woman in Blue was my least favourite but I have still been eagerly awaiting the next Bruton book ever since finishing it. I’m really hoping there might be another in the pipeline for us all to enjoy soon.

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  9. So glad you’re doing this again Madame B, and good luck. What a wonderful book to start with, though. Bruton is just wonderful – a very special writer I think and ‘tender’ is a wonderful word to describe his writing. I hope he has a new book soon!

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  11. I love novels about art and/or artists, so this one definitely goes on the TBR (although it’s not my very favorite Vermeer, I also love this particular painting). I’ve already reaped the benefit of you monthly project (I’ve added some titles to my own list); good luck for the rest of the month!

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  12. Pingback: With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton – #ABookADayInMay – Day 5 – Stuck in a Book

  13. Susan and Simon, Kaggsy, and you (and, I think, Jacqui) convinced me to try him and this was among the three I ordered (I’ve only read one so far). It seems like he manages to come right up to the line, where it could be overly sentimental (twee, I think you say?), but then he swerves so that it’s affecting without gushing.

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