Angela O’Keeffe is the author of Night Blue which was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award.
Today I’ve brought you her latest novel The Sitter
A writer sits in a hotel room in Paris early 2020. By her side is the disembodied form of Hortense Cezanne.
The writer has traveled to France to capture the essence of Hortense for a book about the wife and muse to Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Hortense has returned to the country of her birth for reasons not yet clear to her.
Now the two are confined to their hotel room as the world descends into a strange and unknowable illness, forced to observe the quietening world outside.
The Sitter is a strange beast of a novel. Narrated in turns by the long dead Hortense and the reminiscences of the unnamed writer the book asks the reader to ponder creativity both from the perspective of the creator and their subject.
When we meet Hortense Cezanne she is variously the wife and muse of the painter Cezanne and the freshly reincarnated spirit of the same grappling with her place in the world a century after her death.
This is no fantastical mode of the author but rather a realisation of the author’s work in creating. So often I’ve spoken with authors who talk of their characters being ‘real’ to them. O’Keeffe takes this a step further inserting Hortense into the narrative as she grapples with becoming a reality through the writer’s words.
O’Keeffe’s writer must in her turn work to discover the reality of the Hortense who sits by her side. This disembodied spirit is perhaps not enough to justify her book but how can she discover and then in her way create a fuller figure?
The books turns on an empty street near the center of Paris. As the world succumbs to the early days of the as yet unknown Coronavirus the writer witnesses a tragedy that turns her thoughts inwards. Now she can no longer simply write Hortense’s story.
Stuck in her hotel room she is drawn to a new narrative. Abandoning Hortense’s story the writer turns to her memories to write the story of her own drive and creativity.
I was fascinated by The Sitter for its exploration of the creative process and its questioning of the artists motivations.
Hortense is given voice to expose how she has been silenced and the writer must delve into her own silence to uncover the story she needs to tell.
Both of these stories ruminate on women’s bodies and the ways they are made subject and subjected to a process that renders them voiceless. A process that is rectified somewhat in the ultimate telling of the tale.
The Sitter is an intriguing work and please don’t doubt that I have oversimplified it even as I worked to understand it. I’ll be going back. This is the sort of novel that rewards rereadings and asks of its reader that they take the time to think about the voices and the characters given voice.
