Why would anyone want to be someone else's muse?

August 1991, and an oppressive heatwave in Paris. There's a coup in the Soviet Union, it's there every time you turn on the TV, but Naomi Price is more concerned with overseeing her first fashion shoot as a stylist. Day after day she leaves her cheap hotel room that smells of warm meat pies, and goes to the studio where she hopes she can squeeze something more out of commercial fashion pictures. Then one evening in the hotel courtyard someone hands her a small slip of paper. On it is scrawled a message that hints at a life beyond the limits of hers.

In this bold debut novel, Susan Irvine examines the ability of language to construct and influence our desires. As it charts Naomi's attempts to break out of a delusive existence MUSE proves to be a work of blistering beauty.