The best way to cope with rejection is to write about it

With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a Booker nomination, you might think that Michèle Roberts could have counted on being published for life. But as so many ‘established’ authors know painfully well, in that ever-hungry-for-the-new world there’s no such thing as tenure.

So when her latest novel elicits a lack-lustre response from her agent before being ‘sweetly’ but flatly turned down by her publisher, a stunned Roberts finds herself processing the humiliation in the only way she knows how — by writing about it. ‘My past successes counted for nothing,’ she mournfully observes: ‘There was only this smashed-up present.’ Still, ever the creator, she can’t help wondering whether she mightn’t be able to make something out of the ‘destroyed pieces’ of herself.

The something is this book, and what a thing it is: brave, naked, defiant and exquisitely written. What could so easily have become a score-settling whingefest instead takes flight and turns into a touching and joyously clear-eyed account of what it means to be an artist.

Not that it’s just about writing — far from it. Nature, food, romantic love, loss, the slippery world of the imagination and the enduring and restorative nature of friendship are among its themes. As Roberts flits between her basement flat in London and her ramshackle house in Mayenne, her canvas feels as swoopingly vast as her palette is luscious and bright.

I admit I did initially wonder whether each piece of the patchwork was going to earn its keep. Did I really need to be reminded of what it feels like to stand in the vegetable aisle in Morrison’s? And could I find it in myself to care — as Roberts and a friend head to Paris for the Bonnard exhibition — about the irritatingly late handover of the keys to an Airbnb?

It turns out I could, every single time, because a style that at first feels slapdash, even rambling, soon develops a heady, pointillist beauty.