May 20, 2024
In poet Regel’s alluring debut novel (after the collection Oliver Reed) a London art school graduate takes a job at a feminist archive and stumbles on a mystery buried in the collection. Nicola Long is captivated by the letters of ceramicist Donna Dreeman, who compulsively wrote to her friend Susan Baddeley with accounts of lovers and minor scandals in the 1970s and ’80s. Nicola is also struck by the similarities between Donna and herself—they’re both potters and were born near the same place in Nottingham. The letters allude to “something very close to dread,” and Nicola’s librarian boss, Marcella, tells her Donna died many years ago by suicide. After Nicola tracks down the secretive Susan, with whom Donna was plainly obsessed, she pores over the archive in search of clues about the roots of Donna’s malaise and the true nature of Donna and Susan’s relationship. Regel evokes her protagonist’s thrumming self-recognition as she reads the letters (“This was exactly how she felt. The thrill pulled a thread across her chest; Nicola wasn’t just overhearing, she was being overheard!”). The result is a distinctive story of female friendship. Agent: Harriet Moore, David Higham Assoc.
June 1, 2024
A flailing young London sculptor obsesses over a cache of letters, the legacy of an artistic forerunner. Linear thinkers may find themselves frustrated by this prismatic novel centered on a trove of letters housed in the musty Feminist Assembly archive (presumably a fictional analogue of London's real-life Women's Library). As the editor of an avant-garde arts journal, the author clearly knows the territory; however, the narrative is needlessly overwrought--a mosaic akin to an artfully shattered and reconstructed pot. The biggest impediment is a plethora of points of view, perversely scrambled--sometimes in the course of a single sentence (the reader must constantly recalibrate). The present-day tale of Nicola Long plays out in the past tense, where her artistic ambition appears permanently stalled. She works at a nursery school and spends her lunch hours lying on a bathroom floor; her boyfriend helpfully suggests hairdressing school. Nicola is obsessed with the letters of Donna Dreeman, who died, presumably by suicide, in the 1980s. Her story surfaces in epistolary excerpts that quickly segue into present-tense scenes. Also accorded her own voice is the letters' addressee, Susan Baddeley, Donna's supposedly dull childhood friend, who bridges both eras. There are riches to be found here: exquisitely described physical details (the library's "fuzzy lemonade light") and smart takedowns of artsy pretension. Still, the overall message seems to undercut the artist's mandate: to create something new out of nothingness. A few flights of fancy apart, this is fairly well trodden ground. Sadly for the reader as well as for the protagonists, both artists' pasts prove singularly joyless, tripwired as they are by self-doubt. An overly complex structure mars this otherwise astute and timely examination of the challenges facing women artists.
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