Niven Govinden’s slim and graceful fourth novel begins with an absence – “you”. The book is in apostrophic form, written in the voice of a wildly successful, if markedly eccentric artist, Anna Brown, to her partner, the absent John, who has also been the subject of the majority of her paintings over the years. The narrative skips between scenes of Anna, who is dying in the couple’s home in the rural north-east of America, and John, who has gone on a kind of rambling pilgrimage to photograph Anna’s paintings.

Any recapitulation of the plot misses the point of All the Days and Nights though. It is an exercise in style, in controlled meandering that heaps memory upon memory, presenting a portrait of the couple as layered and complex as one of Anna’s paintings. Govinden’s prose is lush and dense, long sentences within long paragraphs making much use of the antique elegance of the semicolon. The novel calls to mind two obvious influences: Anna and John are straight out of Alice Munro, their long histories and eccentricities seemingly born out of the rugged northern soil. There’s also William Maxwell, whose tutelary presence is felt on every page. Maxwell, a neglected master of the novella, would have been proud of a novel as slender, stylish and moving as this.

All the Days and Nights is published by the Friday Project (£12.99). Click here to buy it for £9.49