At a university archive dedicated to women's art, Nicola discovers one side of a correspondence beginning in 1976 and spanning a dozen years, written from one woman – a ceramics graduate, uncannily like Nicola – to her friend, who is living a contrasting and conventionally moored life. As she reads on, an acute sense of affinity turns into obsession, and she abandons one job after another to make time for the archive. The litany of coincidences in the letters starts to become uncomfortably uncanny, and Nicola's feeling of ownership begets a growing dread: what if she doesn't like where the letters lead?
An evocative, aching riff on the epistolary tradition ... Regel is a poet ... She brings the same keen eye for human idiosyncrasy and the same intuitive muscular command of figurative language to The Last Sane Woman.
Assured ... Regel clearly knows this milieu, and decadent gatherings are depicted with wry humour. Regel is also a poet and delights in language, though her style is occasionally too ornate for my tastes ... The various periods, settings and large cast of minor characters are occasionally disorientating ... A sensitive meditation on creativity and disconnection.
