Griffiths has taken the life of Frida Kahlo as inspiration, creating a fictional autobiography that is a passionate ode to love and creation at their most pure and primal. Acts that can inspire delirious joy, or knee-jerk reactionary fear – art that has consequences beyond success found within the four walls of a museum, the earnest documentary or the polite review – art that can incite tears and rebellion.

For this purpose, there can hardly be a better subject than Frida. Despite a horrific accident as a young woman, she lived her life to the maximum and her paintings are honest and raw outward expressions of an individual’s inner pain, depicting subject matter that continues to resonate: love, fertility and death. Frida’s exuberant identification with indigenous Mexican mythology created a powerful sense of connectedness to the earth and nature, which is another window of expression for the author of this book.

I started reading this deceptively slim volume with some hesitation – there have been some notoriously melodramatic/pretentious renditions of the artistic life – but as I found Griffith’s voice harmonising with what I know of Frida’s life, I was swept up and seduced. Through the great love that Frida had for Diego Rivera, the pain of Frida’s accident and the subsequent loss of fertility and motherhood; love, loss and maternalism are explored in Griffith’s whirling prose. Recently, I received a bewildering advertisement for shoes à la Frida Kahlo – not only did they not look remotely Mexican (to me), they had really high heels – perhaps that was meant to represent the metal rods that impaled the young Kahlo. Frida of the monobrow as fashion promotion?! Style and guts: yes, in buckets. Griffiths has taken these qualities and wrought a lyrical piece that soars – and takes you with it.

Margaret Snowdon is Art & Design Buyer