Nightshade A novel

A lean, taut novel about an artist—a painter—at the height of her career; about the art world; about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal and the prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake.

Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and monstre sacré Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums. Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date—seven enormous, elaborate panels depicting the world’s deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded artistic vision. 
 
As the novel opens, Eve is on a late-night walk through London. Eve makes her way through the city and reflects on her life, the choices she has made, and their repercussions, summoning up her wild art college days in London; her New York years as a tyro artist; her vicious rivalry with her college roommate, now a celebrated figure on the international conceptual art scene. With a growing sense of dread, Eve weighs what’s been gained and what’s been lost in pursuit of her art as Nightshade moves to its dark, shocking end.

ANNALENA McAFEE worked in newspapers for more than three decades. She was arts and literary editor of
the Financial Times and founded the Guardian Review, which she edited for six years. McAfee is the author of the novels Hame and The Spoiler and lives in Gloucestershire, England, with her husband, the writer Ian McEwan.