Better late than never! The last two books I read for Novella November were Angela O’Keeffe’s The Sitter and Rose Tremain’s Absolutely and Forever.

Angela O’Keeffe is extremely creative. Within a mere 180 pages, she manages to deliver a layered story about the past and the present, at the same time bending narrative conventions. The story begins in 2020, when Paris is on the brink of a COVID lockdown. An Australian writer, there to finish a novel about Hortense Cezanne, wife and sometime muse of the famous painter, reflects on her own past experiences and particularly the stories we choose to tell about ourselves. Spliced with the writer’s thoughts are those of Hortense, who ‘comes to life’ through the writer.

I am a combination of the me I once was when I lived, and the me that the writer cannot help but give bits of herself to.

This is not a work of magic realism or a ghost story. Rather, it defies categorisation – but trust in the fact that Hortense’s voice works beautifully.

O’Keeffe descriptions are evocative but never overdone. I could have picked quotes from every page but I’m always a sucker for a striking description of the sea  –

…I could hear its roar of outrage – for the sea is a constant agitator for change, for resetting…

Lastly, I realise that my grief-lens is perhaps more sharply (or frequently) focused than that of many other readers, and in the case of The Sitter, the themes of grief are slowly revealed. O’Keeffe succinctly captures the idea that grief never leaves us –

Our lives are filled with emblems of loss, and they continue to reverberate in us, and sometimes, after years, they can bring us undone.

4/5

My experience with Rose Tremain in the past has been positive. I have enjoyed her short stories, her novels, and thought her memoir, Rosie, was outstanding. However, Absolutely and Forever was a miss. The style is all very jolly-jolly-hockey-sticks and people called Binky and Sparky (not really, but you get the drift), and although that was fitting for the subject of this story, it was also like eating too much sugar and having your teeth ache for hours afterwards.

We meet 15-year-old Marianne Clifford, who has fallen hopelessly in love ‘absolutely and forever’ with Simon Hurst, an 18-year-old with great promise (based on his good looks, his family’s standing and the fact that he’s on the verge of studies at Oxford). However, Simon’s plans are disrupted, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Try as I might, I couldn’t warm to Marianne. In fact, I wanted to shout, “Stop being such a nitwit!” But her silliness and self-criticism knew no limits. Minor characters offered some relief but as the story is told in the first-person, it’s impossible to escape Marianne’s mooning over Simon, and her naive fantasies about adult life.

There is a twist in this story – again, not to Tremain’s usual standard but enough to provide a satisfactory conclusion.

2.5/5