The Sitter (Angela O’Keeffe, UQP)

There is a sentence halfway through Angela O’Keeffe’s second novel, The Sitter, that says: ‘A character, when they enter a story, must be willing to drop their preconceptions of what the story is.’ This is good advice for the characters in the book and any reader. The Sitter is a spellbinding work that will challenge readers to let go of their preconceptions of what fiction should be, give in to the undertow, and be carried away. The Sitter opens in the intimate but liminal space of a hotel room. Two women stand staring out over the quiet streets of Paris during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. One woman is a writer, the other is the writer’s subject, who has been dead since 1922: Hortense Cezanne, wife of painter Paul Cezanne. Hortense has been conjured into being by the writer. She is supposed to be the subject of the book the writer is working on, just as she was the subject of 29 of her husband’s paintings, but it doesn’t take long for the power dynamic to shift and for Hortense to find a life, and a voice, of her own. O’Keeffe’s first novel Night Blue garnered numerous award nominations and The Sitter will surely do the same. It is an elegant mosaic that interrogates power, female relationships, and the purpose of art.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Cosima McGrath is a freelance editor and former bookseller. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews