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Four women close to the Austrian painter are illuminated in this impressive debut, set against the tumult of Secession Vienna and its pandemic

Egon Schiele’s images of women are challenging and varied. Some are elusive, quaint or decorative, but many are sexual, powerful, provocative. They raise unsettling questions of voyeurism and exploitation. 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. 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.

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. 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 second section belongs to Gerti and recounts Schiele’s childhood. 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. By contrast, the young Schiele is shown as a rebel, already at odds with his family and the world.

The novel then moves on to Walburga, whom Schiele meets through Gustav Klimt. 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. Yet he abandons her to marry Edith. That union is usually explained in terms of social advantage, but Haydock depicts Edith as more than a trophy bride.

As a feminist reworking of Schiele’s story, and as an exercise in redressing historical injustice, this novel is a glorious success. Haydock ensures that these women emerge from behind Schiele’s gaze, and she also uses them to illuminate a period of seismic change. The first world war ends, the empire collapses, women gradually embark on a precarious liberation. The climax also has a contemporary resonance that Haydock cannot have anticipated when she embarked on the project. For this is the era of the Spanish flu, and the casual way in which Vienna stumbles into that disaster has become horribly familiar. The bitter end of the story is particularly painful when viewed through the lens of current events.

Perhaps the only problem is that Schiele remains strangely shadowy. When he decides to marry Edith, he tries to convince Walburga that he will be able to continue a relationship with her. Haydock interprets this as a failure to understand women, rather than a cynical attempt at exploitation. She also holds back from examining the Tatjana incident in detail, and from exploring whether his relationship with his sister was incestuous.

It is possible her novel might have been stronger if she had grappled more fully with these moral complexities. However, the mystery and ambiguity of Schiele the man is inseparable from the power of his art; no matter how we interpret his actual relationships with women, his paintings often give them a power and autonomy generally absent in the other art of his era.

Overall, this is an impressive and highly enjoyable debut. The worlds Haydock creates feel solid and fully inhabited. The unresolved jealousies and tensions between Adele and her sister are threaded neatly through the pages. Haydock has created an expansive novel of the gaze and the image that also explains how these four muses inspired and challenged Schiele, while negotiating roles for themselves in a society where they were celebrated but powerless.

The Flames by Sophie Haydock is published by Doubleday (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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