in the opening line of the first chapter, one of the novel’s protagonists, nicola, says: “i want to read about women that can’t make things.” that’s an appropriate description of the book—everything that goes into women making art and everything that pushes back. why they may not be able to, what inhibits them?

the book isn’t an essay, however, broken down in a fictional context. it weaves an engaging story, painting a portrait of the artist around whom the story is built, donna. nicola is a struggling artist herself, discovering donna through the letters she wrote her friend susan throughout her life, many years after donna’s death. the letters resonate so deeply with nicola reading them becomes an obsession, and deeper parallels form between the life of donna, in the past, and nicola, now.

while all three of the central women—donna, nicola, and susan—are followed in third person, the book also includes the letters themselves that donna wrote to susan. the letters are messy and unsure, but written with such a distinct voice it strikes you with its complete sincerity. chronicling maybe a decade of donna’s struggling as an artist, it presents the reader, in unflinching detail, what goes in to the vague sentiment of being an artist, what someone might put up with in pursuit of it.

this book is for anyone who has ever felt unsure of themselves, who has doubted if they have been truly and irreversibly wrong when it comes to the choices they’ve made—related to art. Or otherwise. and of course, it’s also about the strength (stubbornness?) that means you can never stop, never give it up entirely. i know i’ll find myself retuning to the last sane woman time and time again in the future.

thank you so much to verso books and netgalley for the arc!

If you like reading about friendships and the sweetness of sharing your thoughts and anxieties with your besties, you’ll enjoy this.

Artist Nicola stumbles across a collection of letters written many years ago by a woman named Donna to her best friend Susan. These letters span their many relationships, aspirations, anxieties, and letdowns of their lives only to be thankful to have each other at the end of the day. Nicola finds comfort in these letters as she learns Donna is also an artist and seemed to be going through the same struggles as she‘a currently navigating.

Beautifully written and comforting to read about the similarities we all have as women trying to make it through life. I enjoyed this but unfortunately the mix of different POVs and slow pace of the book made it harder for me to get through. I do think this is going to be a popular book for many, and I will be recommending, but ultimately I struggled with continuing to pick this up. Maybe I’ll give it a reread in the future.

3 stars! Thank you to Netgalley and Verso for the ARC :)

I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

This book had such an interesting concept and incredibly gorgeous writing. I just got a bit lost in the timeline in parts as it was confusing to who was narrating but apart from that I did really enjoy the abstract poetical writing and storyline

The Last Sane Woman is about a struggling artist discovering a box of letters written by a famous potter. As she reads the letters, she attempts to understand her meaning and purpose in life.
This novel forced me to pay attention and reread it to ensure I comprehended every chapter. I believe a reader will need to be in the right mood to pick this one up. With that said, I wouldn't recommend it as a beach read. However, literary fiction fans looking for a challenge will enjoy this one.

As so many others have said, it’s clear this book was written by a poet. It made me feel many things; but also, it feels like it delighted more in language than meaning. (Which, of course, is perfectly valid.) I wanted to know more: how did the potter die? It feels like the book advances multiple possibilities—which is … ok, but not satisfying. I think Nicola’s frustration after she finished reading the letters is my frustration too.

The good? The story carried me along. Donna was a really interesting character, and Nicola a pretty good anti-hero. I also quite liked the form of the novel; I first tried to read the DRC on my Kindle, which worked not at all as there was no way to distinguish between POVs. Switching to NetGalley’s app fixed that, and *The Last Sane Woman* became a much more legible read. I was also very much on board with the feminist message: the Feminist Assembly, archives for female artists, disappearing women artists, and all of that. I just feel it wasn’t the main point of the book—but am still somewhat bewildered about what that would have been. (PS. I did read a review that clarifies that in connection with the title, and I will go down that rabbit hole. I’m just a little frustrated that meanings like that were not more accessible for this reader.)

Thank you to Verso and to NetGalley. I will no doubt be pondering for a while, trying to work out just what I read, and what I was supposed to get from it.

I'm sorry but this really wasn't for me. I gave it one star because I finished it but it gave me a headache in the process.

I try to look for something good in every book I read but I was struggling from the beginning with this. In fact it took me four attempts to get past the first 30 pages. I simply couldn't get a grip on what it was trying to tell me.

The story appears simple - a woman, Nicola Long, is searching for purpose and comes across letters written by a potter - Donna Drennan - to her friend, Susan Baddesley. All we know about Donna is that she had some mild success at the start of her career but then struggled and finally ended her own life. The recipient of the letters had given them to an archive of/for women (The Feminist Assembly).

And that's all I can tell you. The prose rambles around from person to person without any discernible breaks so you become bewildered (until a name is mentioned) as to who you are reading about. (Maybe that was the point?) The metaphors come thick and fast at times and are often totally nonsensical ("chattering like a tin can"?)

As far as I could see none of the women did anything particularly useful they just complained about not knowing what to do. Donna and Nicola both seem to squander opportunities and ramble about living here and there and wondering why they aren't successful. They both drove me mad with their apathy. You barely get to know Susan except to learn that she stayed in touch with Donna and kept her letters.

As I say I do try to find something good but I failed. Mea culpa. I also never worked out who the "last sane woman" was. Certainly not I by the end of this book.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Verso Books for the advance review copy.

There was something about the book blurb that really called out to me; the idea of getting to know an artist through letters just sounded sublime.

It could have been the fact that this was an unfinished e-galley, but it was not an easy read. The story shifts back and forth in perspective between present-day Nicola, past unnamed potter (who does get named somewhere in the middle of the book), and past/present Sarah, the recipient of the potter's letters. The formatting (which I can only assume will be clearer in the final version) made it difficult to distinguish between the three POVs and got quite confusing.

There are a multitude of comparisons and contrasts between the lives of all three that adds to the complexity...but also the beauty of the story. There are a lot of lovely passages and all the angst and self-doubt that makes this such an interesting study of these three different, yet similar women.

Unfortunately, after all the beautiful writing, the ending absolutely lost me. I have no idea what point the author was trying to make with it. And I think some people might actually appreciate how open-ended Regel left things, but I felt extreme frustration to be left hanging.

Final verdict: This will definitely appeal to literary fiction readers and it worth a read

you know when a book just WORKS for you? i devoured this - started it during a morning off from work, and nearly finished it during a power outage that night. something about it just absolutely clicked with me and i loved it. thank you to verso and netgalley for the digital copy! i’ve already preordered a physical copy for my bookshelf 🫡

the last sane woman weaves together the lives of 3 different women. we have present-day nicola, who is feeling lost and directionless after studying art at university; donna, a sculptor creating in the 1970s and 1980s and drifting from opportunity to opportunity; and donna’s best friend susan, leading a conventional life with a house, husband, and baby. when nicola discovers letters that donna wrote to susan in a feminist art archive, she becomes obsessed with how similar her and donna are.

the writing here is DELICIOUS. so rich and detailed and it’s evident that regel is a poet-turned-novelist, but in the best way possible. the combination of scenes from each of the women’s lives mixed with excerpts of the letters that donna wrote to susan made the book compulsively readable. there is a web of other people that the three main characters are connected to that made the reading experience so immersive. it explores female friendship, the issue of finding your purpose in life, the struggle of whether or not to live a traditional domestic life, and the way that female artists are erased from history.

think of this as the contemporary counterpart to lisa tuttle’s my death (one of my other favorite reads of the year) but hold the metaphysical craziness. there’s that same thread of finding an artist that you feel so connected to, that you feel like you are one and the same. the picture of donna that is painted by her letters has a lot of gaps that nicola is unable to fill in, and those gaps allow nicola to really project herself onto donna, but as readers we get to fill in some of the blanks through the scenes from donna’s life.

i thought the way this played with form and explored the ideas it presents was so engaging, and i’m obsessed with regel’s writing style. can’t wait to see what she does next!

*3.5

Centering a female artist at wits end, she discovers another female artist 30 years her senior, dead, through letters that focus on art, productivity, all in and around the female body.

Funny. Odd. Spirited. It's a long stretch of a character study in trying to place the what matters most between past and present, all to realize we're all going through the same shit, just at different times.

Interesting and bold. I'm not sure if it holds up as it warrants a reread, but it's Woolfian in its attempt, but lackluster due to being a classic DWM (in a time we are spoiled with too many of this genre) with a writing style that doesn't know how to move from poetry to the novel form.

"The Last Sane Woman" is an exploration of the constraints and opportunities of making art as a woman. The three women at its center are each trying to make a life, with the narrative switching between time periods, locations, voices, and media. Regel's prose keeps the women distinct enough that we can pick up who is speaking, but the magic of this book happens where Regel blends their voices and lives together. This book is, in many ways, about finding and sharing space with other artistic women. The result is fittingly beautiful and intelligent.

The Last Sane Woman reads like a novel written by a poet, which is what it is. There are long, poetic passages, sometimes-confusing changes in POV and an innovative form that brings disparate storylines together at the end. I had to re-read the first 100 pages when I found myself confused by the number of characters and their one-offs. I kept notes the second time through and was able to successfully orient myself to the point where I felt comfortable. That’s not to say that everything was clear to me. The format of the book is such that the storylines wax and wane and the reader is swept along with the current. The main character – Nicola – is a ceramics potter who finds herself artistically stymied and turns to the letters of another artist (written 30 years earlier and ending in the artist’s suicide) to try to find motivation. The confluence of the storylines leaves an ending that begs the reader to stand back and consider the main themes of female friendship and the role of female artists in the art world. I was a little too confused to give this book top marks, but I enjoyed reading it and discovering the similarities between the two artists’ stories. I would recommend this to women who are interested in the art world and who like a poetic bent to their prose.

I would give the plot a 5 star review. Unfortunately, I personally struggled with the writing style. I found it difficult to follow and often had the feeling of falling out of the story. That said, I really loved that characters and thought that that plot was original and intriguing.

Thank you NetGalley and Verso books for an ARC of this book! “The Last Sane Woman” was definitely one of the most challenging books I’ve read in a while, but it was quite rewarding. This is a book that will make you think and break down plot and characters to its essential theme. The structure of the narrative is occasionally hard to keep track of, but the lyrical writing style kept me engaged throughout the reading process.
The novel follows Nicola, a recent graduate from art school as she finds a box of letters that once belonged to another female artist who has since died. Nicola is struck by the similarities of her situation with that of the older artist. From the reader traces Nicola’s processing of her own loss of direction and apprehension for the future.
With the narrative seamlessly blending the past with the present, the reading experience required a high degree of attention and effort to ensure I understood what was going on. Yet, this blended storytelling is essential to identifying the similarities between these two stories, and in some ways I wish I let go of trying to pick up every detail and just read with the flow.

Looping across timelines, The Last Sane Woman finds Nicola, a lonely, possibly depressed fine arts graduate, who spends most of her time reading archived letters from a 70's ceramicist to her friend who leads a more conventional life.


Gradually Nicola becomes more and more obsessed with the archive and her semblance of a life begins to unravel. as she gets closer to the end of the correspondence will she like where they end?.

Captivating and evocative.

I really didn't know what to expect with this book, but I really enjoyed it once I started reading. It took me a little while to get into the story, mostly because the way it is written, it took me a little while to get my head around who the various characters are. Mostly because it jumps around a little bit, but a good part of that was down to my tired brain.
This is a very good read and not one that I was really expecting.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and given voluntarily.

The writing style of this book reminded me a bit of “Mrs. Dalloway”, of which I was not a fan. It seemed to me a bit bland and staccato, while being confusing at the same time and I just could not get into it. Perhaps I am just not the right audience, but this book didn’t cut it for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance read copy.

I adore this book so much, I almost stopped reading on Netgalley several times in order to wait for a finished copy because I wanted to go be able to go through and underline all the incredible sentences but I kept needing to come back and now I'll be waiting for it to come out so I can read it again. This book feels very real in its depiction of a forgotten female potter, the friend she wrote too throughout her career and the young woman finding the letters years later, and seems like an important reminder that the grand success stories we are used to seeing aren't the most important and the way history is recorded falls so far short. This feels like a rediscovered classic more than a new novel (an amazing thing), with shades of Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble.

Honestly, I think it’s a me problem!! I thought I was going to absolutely love this but I don’t think I was in the right mood to read this. It’s quite slow and very character-focused, which typically I’m all for, but this one just fell flat. It would also get a bit muddled and confusing with the lack of quotation marks and frequent narrative/timeline shifts in the middle of the chapters. There was some really nice, sublime writing but it also edged on being too poetic.

I think this will be a big hit for a more niche group, and possibly if I re-visited at a different time, but it wasn’t quite for me.

Thank you to NegGalley and Verso Fiction for the ARC.

beautiful, inspiring artistic epistolary novel. I want to know more about all of these characters, and that's one of the signs of a great book, leave the reader wanting more. Nicola is so interesting and the way she delves into the letters and abruptly alters her life around reading them is so relatable.