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.