Angela O'Keeffe in conversation

Angela O’Keeffe’s new novel  The Sitter begins with ‘the author’ in an apartment in Paris, looking out towards the burnt shell of the Notre Dame Cathedral. She is, ostensibly, researching the life of Marie-Hortense Fiquet, but Hortense, dead these hundred years, seems to have, in some way, taken over the process of writing. Hortense was, of course, better known as the wife of Cézanne. He painted 29 portraits of her, in none of which she smiles. This is a beautiful small novel, as tightly constructed as any of the portraits. ‘The Sitter is intricately crafted in this way – recurrences, transfigurations and adaptations of details are threaded across the work, their resonance and meanings shifting and changing along the way… For all of its interest in imagination and art, and in looking and being seen, The Sitter is at its heart a novel about grief and love – and their frequent intertwining – as well as the sacrifices that women are compelled to make for love, and the ways in which women might resist, and reclaim themselves – however long after the fact. ‘ Guardian Australia