... these are intimate letters, their author seemingly having taken to heart Colette’s writing advice (look at what gives you pleasure, but look longest at what gives you pain), and it’s this that enables me to forgive, if not quite to overlook, the rather fey idea of a one-sided conversation with a woman who died in 1939.

... excellent.

The conceit takes some time to bed in. The first letter, straining with forced intimacy, is at points embarrassing to read.

Although some of the emotional traumas here will be familiar to readers of Paul’s previous volume, it is Gwen John’s life as much as her own that is the focus of this book. The intense stillness, calm and beautifully modulated tones of John’s painting give little clue to a life of roiling emotion and fiercely driven passion.

Paul’s prose is spare and luminous, revealing her painter’s eye in attention to color, texture, and depth.