The Original

The Original by Nell Stevens is another brilliant historical novel about art and queerness.

Oxfordshire, 1899. Grace Inderwick grows up on the peripheries of a once-great household, an unwanted guest in her uncle’s home. She has unusual skills and unusual predilections: for painting, though faces elude her; for lurking in the shadows; for other girls.
 
Then a letter arrives, postmarked Saint Helena. After years missing at sea, Grace’s cousin Charles is ready to come home. When Charles returns, unrecognisable and uncanny, a rift emerges between those who claim he is an imposter and Grace’s aunt, who insists he is her son. And Grace, whose intimate knowledge of forgeries is her own closely-guarded secret, must decide who and what to believe in, and what kind of life she wants to live.
 
Deftly-plotted and shimmering with Nell Stevens’s distinctive intelligence, style and wit, The Original is a novel about the value of authenticity in art and in love, and what it means to be a true original.

Stevens is a brilliant writer! Read everything she publishes.

Stevens, Nell. (2025). The Original. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.