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
A very funny, and ultimately moving, portrait of an aging artist reclaiming her identity
This is a vicious little book, and thus all the more enjoyable
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
Mackay's gifts for biting description and black comedy are both much in evidence here . . . [her] prose is a joy to read
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
