Following a series of devastating rejections, Michèle Roberts began keeping an account of her life in the hope it might help mend her shattered sense of self. In this intimate and wryly honest journal she reflects on cities and countryside, loss and love, food, friendships, sisterhood, pleasure and memories.
Following a series of devastating rejections, Michèle Roberts began keeping an account of her life in the hope it might help mend her shattered sense of self. In this intimate and wryly honest journal she reflects on cities and countryside, loss and love, food, friendships, sisterhood, pleasure and memories.
'Yesterday ended in disaster. Very late at night, I decided to write down everything that had happened; the only way I could think of coping.'
Following a series of devastating rejections, Michèle Roberts began keeping an account of her life in the hope it might help mend her shattered sense of self. In this intimate and wryly honest journal she reflects on cities and countryside, loss and love, food, friendships, sisterhood, pleasure and memories, her abiding relationship with France and with literature. Over the course of a year a new pattern of being develops, until, finally, she finds a better relationship between inner and outer worlds.
“'A magnificent writer.'”
‘A wonderful writer: one in possession of immense feeling’
Rachel Cooke, The Observer‘A magnificent writer.’
Helen Dunmore, The Guardian‘Michele Roberts is a writer who has always excelled at embodying the joy of female intellectual and earthly appetites.’
Deborah Levy‘Funny, wise and all-embracing’
Carmen Callil‘Michèle Roberts has always been a terrific, complex writer with a natural tone, a tone of her own, and Negative Capability is among the best of her books.’
Andrew O’HaganRaw and glittering... Superb.
-- Christina Patterson The Sunday TimesRoberts writes with wit and honesty.
The IndependentBracing and galvanising.
-- Susie Boyt Financial TimesBrave, naked, defiant and exquisitely written.
-- Julie Myerson The SpectatorRoberts’ intimate, candid writing is underpinned by a dry humour, wry observations, and a poignant strain of melancholy perfect for our time.
BookBlastBold, serious and life-enhancing.
BookOxygenMichèle Roberts is the author of fourteen critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the House, which won the WHSmith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. She has also published poetry and short stories, and her most recent memoir, Negative Capability, was published to critical acclaim in 2020. Half-English and half-French, Michèle Roberts lives in London. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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