At last, a novel about the art world that rings true: Annalena Mcfee’s Nightshade reviewed

On a winter’s night an artist of moderately exalted reputation and in lateish middle age journeys across London, away from the stuccoed comforts of what was until recently home towards a studio in the East End, where a much younger lover lies waiting. Observations, generally of a caustic nature, about the comédie humaine encountered along the way and the state of the wider world jostle in the artist’s febrile mind with an apologia for the previous nine months’ events.

The artist is a woman, Eve Laing, but the tropes past which Nightshade flits like an Underground train are strikingly, almost mundanely, male — the ageing, status-anxious creative, the mid-life crisis, the much younger lover, even the caustic observations. Eve knows as much, lacing her tale with sauce-for-the-goosery and what-aboutism. She recalls a period spent as the ‘muse’ of an older Lucian Freud-like painter (which in practice meant model and sexual standby), and asks whether her dalliance with the ephebic Luka has really been so bad.

Is it really a good idea to sack your health and safety person when working on an exhibition of poisonous plants?

Along the way, there are hints that Eve is not the most reliable of narrators. She keeps returning to her dislike of an old friend, Wanda, now a superstar of ‘body art’. But why does she resent her so much? And is it really a good idea to sack your health and safety person when you’re working on an exhibition of poisonous plants, rendered in toxic pigments? Can Luka’s delight in her be for real? (The male body doesn’t lie, she believes somewhat naively.)