Welcome to Book Talk, where we help you find new fuel for your bookish obsession. While you might not find these authors while scrolling short-form content online, you will find their work to be significant, impactful, and, hopefully, something you reach for time and again. Happy reading!
I am a firm believer that those who write poetry before transitioning to fiction will always produce an exceptional novel; one that drives into the core of your being simply because the author is a poet at heart — able to distill the human experience into sharp, biting prose that lingers, rattling around your head for months after reading. Hannah Regel is no exception.
There’s not much about Regel online. She has two poetry collections published with Montez Press — When I Was Alive (2017) and Oliver Reed (2020) — and one novel, The Last Sane Woman (2024), which received the K Blundell Trust award. Otherwise, she’s relatively ghost-like, appearing for the occasional interview before burrowing back to wherever poets live between projects.
The Last Sane Woman is one of those books where I saw the cover on Pinterest and was instantly intrigued. I don’t care what anyone says: you can judge a book by its cover, and this one had something that caught my eye (read: graphic design that isn’t terrible and a tired duplication of every other book cover right now). Add into the equation that I actually read the synopsis for once, and I knew I needed to read it.
Full disclosure: my thoughts on this book are entirely biased. My favourite genre of book (aside from spooky stuff) is women behaving in a way that’s not deemed acceptable by society — think breakdowns, bad behaviour, rage, and general rambunctiousness and tomfoolery. Add to this a book about a ceramicist, which includes personal letters and an archive (I am a freak for archives), and you have a book that is entirely Catherine-coded.
And The Last Sane Woman has all of it: an artist working a job she hates while pushing aside her artistic tendencies. A chance discovery of an archive centred on women and their creative work. Mysterious letters between a ceramicist and her friend, full of debauchery and the general messiness that comes with being 20-something years old. And then, the obsessive qualities of the protagonist as she becomes mired in the life of someone no longer alive. While it sounds messy, it’s anything but. Regel manages to refine chaos into something brilliant and razor-edged.
As it’s a relatively new book, and my borrowed copy has long been returned to the library, I have no quotes to share with you this week. However, I will say this: if you’re feeling lost as an artist, are looking for motivation to pick up your artist’s tools, or just need to feel better about yourself and your creative practice, The Last Sane Woman needs to be your next read.
Happy reading!
