This was the perfect slim, elegant, intelligent, sexy, creepy, poetic spring read. I really enjoyed it, and I’ve gone and put a lot of Tuttle’s other work on my tbr. She’s reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, but also she’s get her own thing going on.
The book follows a biographer on her quest to unearth a forgotten modernist woman artist. The premise sounds a bit strange, even complicated, but it’s a thrilling, compelling read with a great “set design”.
The narrator is originally from the US, but has lived in the UK for a long time; she’s settled in Scotland and she’s lost her life partner recently. The grief has sent her spiralling into writer’s block, but she decides quite spontaneously to start writing a non-fiction book.
This new book is going to be the biography of an artist: Helen Ralston. This is one of the author’s heroes whose life she’s been aware of and whose work she’s followed, yet Ralston still remains somewhat a mystery. Ralston herself, perhaps surprisingly, is eager to meet her biographer, and a wary dynamic is formed.
What happens when Ralston starts to flesh out as a real woman? What really happened between Ralston and her lover on that island in the 1920s? Why did she leave the UK?
I don’t want to give it all away, but it’s a very interesting, twisty tale. It’s all about identity, memory, desire: written in poetic and sensual language that’s feverish.
Read this novella in a haze of excitement and joy, stopping every now and then to marinate and shiver.
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