Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2020
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A lean, taut novel about an artist--a painter--at the height of her career, about the art world, about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal, and the large choices and prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake. By the much-admired author of The Spoiler ("cutting wit and razor-sharp writing" - NYTBR; "a dark, sparkly gem of a book" - Christopher Buckley) and Hame ("I couldn't put it down" - Patrick McGrath).
Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and "monstre sacré" Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums.
Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date--seven enormous, elaborate panels of the world's deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent high-wire life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded artistic vision. As the novel opens out, Eve is on a late-night walk through London, setting out from her former family home in the well-heeled west of the city, back to her studio, a converted factory in the grittier east, where her recently completed masterpiece hangs and where a fatal reckoning may await...Eve makes her way through the city and reflects on her life today and as it was years ago, and considers the large choices she has made and their repercussions.
As she walks, she summons up her wild art college days in London; her New York years as a tyro artist; her vicious rivalry with her college roommate, now a celebrated figure on the international conceptual art scene whose full-blown success and recognition still infuriates and rankles Eve's sense of rightness with the world. And as she weighs what's been gained and what's been lost in pursuit of her art, a sense of dread settles over her, one she cannot shake, and as Nightshade moves to its dark, shocking end, it explores large questions--about ambition...artistic truth...betrayal...about bad people making good art...about the consequences of fame...and the devastating price of love.
"Eve isn't meant to be likable—McAfee's whip-smart text implicitly makes the point that no one objects to male artists being selfish and unkind—but she's desperately human...A brilliant character study encased in a gripping plot with a fabulous final twist." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[C]austically entertaining...Eve's obsessive self-absorption and ambition make this a pleasing investigation of the limits of artistic influence." - Publishers Weekly
"McAfee's prose is lyrical yet sharp, and her descriptions of both the method and the intricately researched work itself are superbly convincing...The ending is simultaneously overdramatic and yet vastly satisfying." - The Guardian
This information about Nightshade was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Annalena McAfee was born in London and was educated at Essex University. She is the author of Hame and The Spoiler. McAfee worked in newspapers for more than three decades. She was arts and literary editor of the Financial Times and founded the Guardian Review, which she edited for six years. She lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, the writer Ian McEwan.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
