Cut Out Michèle Roberts

Sandstone Press £14.99 Last year Roberts published a candid memoir of having a previous novel rejected by her publisher, despite a long record of success. Now comes a subtle and delicate new work of fiction imagining the unsung lives of women in the orbit of Henri Matisse. Split between past and present, it follows Clémence, a convent girl who worked for the artist, and her godson, Denis, who unearths the secrets behind his famous collages of cut and coloured paper.