The Sitter

Judges' comments

At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic an Australian writer, locked down in a Paris hotel room, works on her novel about Hortense Cezanne. The fraught writing process is overseen by the ghost of Hortense, who the writer has brought into the living world for various motives, some of which are obvious and others which are not revealed. Both women watch what unfolds before them and what has unfolded within them.

Angela O’Keeffe’s masterful novel addresses the human question around how we create art and how we are haunted by our histories. Deftly she ushers the reader in, makes us privy to the family secrets of both women, all the while inviting us to surrender to the story and the way it is told. The Sitter dramatises the feeling and experience that we all face as contemporary subjects, as consumers, as art-makers, as travellers, as lovers as sitters. This captivating novel reveals striking literary talent.

The Sitter bears the hallmarks of marvellous literature. O’Keeffe employs a rarely seen ingenuity and intuition to tell a complex narrative that traverses reality and time as we know it. For that reason, among others, The Sitter is truly novel. Every moment in the narrative is measured, poised, consequential, yet through it all the reader is kept on the precipice so as to invite them to consider their own existence. When it comes to telling a story about who we are when we are on our own, this novel is a dazzling standout.