Editions

Nightshade

Nightshade

'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

Reviews

  • 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

  • Brilliant and biting.

    Financial Times

  • 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

  • McAfee’s engaging novel combines a dark plot with a zestful skewering of the contemporary art world.

    Mail on Sunday

  • Eve is a fascinating, plausible creation, both alluring and monstrous in her all-consuming self-regard.

    Metro

  • [A] pacy tale of marital breakdown on the London art scene… Eve is an engagingly spiky anti-heroine.

    Daily Mail

More from this Author

About the Author

Annalena McAfee

Annalena McAfee is the author of two novels, The Spoiler and Hame. She founded the Guardian Review, which she edited for six years, and was Arts and Literary Editor of the Financial Times.

Annalena McAfee

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Podcasts

Scotland with Annalena McAfee, Rory Stewart and Denise Mina

There's a distinctly Scottish flavour to this month's podcast as we discuss the idea of home with Annalena McAfee, the concept of borders with Rory Stewart and walk the streets of Glasgow on the trail of a serial killer with Denise Mina

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