FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)
‘[Her] prose is a joy to read’ MICHAEL ARDITTI, INDEPENDENT
‘This is a vicious little book, and thus all the more enjoyable’ PAUL BAUMANN, NEW YORK TIMES
‘A . . . funny, and ultimately moving’ KIRKUS REVIEWS
The Artist’s Widow is the story of the good, the bad and the untalented. It begins on a hot August evening in Mayfair, at a private viewing of the ‘Last Paintings’ of John Crane. Among those present are Crane’s widow, Lyris, also a painter; her friend Clovis Ingram, a middle-aged bookseller; Zoe, a beautiful young television filmmaker; and Lyris’s great-nephew Nathan Pursey, a boorish young conceptual artist.
None of them realises that the evening will change their lives forever.
The Artist’s Widow is a novel about the nature of the artistic impulse – about friendship, betrayal, courage and cowardice. It is also a London novel, exploring the mental and physical geography of the city in all its variety.
‘[Her] prose is a joy to read’ MICHAEL ARDITTI, INDEPENDENT
‘This is a vicious little book, and thus all the more enjoyable’ PAUL BAUMANN, NEW YORK TIMES
‘A . . . funny, and ultimately moving’ KIRKUS REVIEWS
The Artist’s Widow is the story of the good, the bad and the untalented. It begins on a hot August evening in Mayfair, at a private viewing of the ‘Last Paintings’ of John Crane. Among those present are Crane’s widow, Lyris, also a painter; her friend Clovis Ingram, a middle-aged bookseller; Zoe, a beautiful young television filmmaker; and Lyris’s great-nephew Nathan Pursey, a boorish young conceptual artist.
None of them realises that the evening will change their lives forever.
The Artist’s Widow is a novel about the nature of the artistic impulse – about friendship, betrayal, courage and cowardice. It is also a London novel, exploring the mental and physical geography of the city in all its variety.
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Reviews
This is a vicious little book, and thus all the more enjoyable
A very funny, and ultimately moving, portrait of an aging artist reclaiming her identity
The Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights
Mackay's gifts for biting description and black comedy are both much in evidence here . . . [her] prose is a joy to read
Few writers are as adept as Mackay in summing up temperament, appearance and motivation in the space of one spare, stunning sentence . . . The sadness at the narrative's core is beautifully controlled; the wit is buoyant
