'Nightshade is a glorious novel... full of twisted sexuality, art and power' Observer
Family life. Reputation. They took a lifetime to build and a second to wreck.
Eve Laing, once the muse of an infamous painter, is now — forty years later — an artist herself. But she has sacrificed her career for her family and she resents the global success of her old college roommate. When Eve embarks on her most ambitious work yet, she takes a wrecking ball to her comfortable life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded creative vision.
This brilliant and timely novel explores sexual politics and asks if the true artist must relinquish the ordinary human need for love and connection. Can the creative urge be the most destructive — even deadliest — impulse of all?
'Brilliant and biting' Financial Times
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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 19/03/2020
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ISBN: 9781473573703
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Length: 304 Pages
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RRP: £16.99
Reviews
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Nightshade is a glorious novel... full of twisted sexuality, art and power, about what it means to commit yourself entirely to the artistic life. The book's ending is unforgettable.
Observer
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Brilliant and biting.
Financial Times
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The drama of creation, of impending triumph or failure, and the expert rendering of the artistic process, all lift the novel to a new level...McAfee’s prose is lyrical yet sharp… the novel fascinates…and Nightshade’s questions continue to intrigue.
Guardian
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McAfee’s engaging novel combines a dark plot with a zestful skewering of the contemporary art world.
Mail on Sunday
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Eve is a fascinating, plausible creation, both alluring and monstrous in her all-consuming self-regard.
Metro
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[A] pacy tale of marital breakdown on the London art scene… Eve is an engagingly spiky anti-heroine.
Daily Mail
