Nell Stevens The Original review, recensie en informatie historische roman van de Engelse schrijfster. Op 1 juli 2025 verschijnt bij W.W. Norton & Company de roman van de uit Engeland afkomstige schrijfster Nell Stevens. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.
Nell Stevens The Original review en recensie
- “Nell Stevens’s marvel of a novel The Original, a story of creativity, legacy and real worth, is full of narrative cunning, narrative goodness. What a very good heart it has.” (Ali Smith, Guardian)
- “Immaculate in structure, sure-footed in tone and propelled forward by a rising tide of apprehension, the novel is a captivatingly strange masterpiece of Victorian pastiche. It puts Stevens in the class of Sarah Waters and even du Maurier herself as a sharp-witted fiction writer whose masterly technique and style are matched and sustained by a compelling gift for spinning a yarn.” (Miranda Seymour, Financial Times)
The Original
- Auteur: Nell Stevens (Engeland)
- Soort boek: Engelse historische roman
- Taal: Engels
- Uitgever: W.W. Norton & Company
- Verschijnt: 1 juli 2025
- Omvang: 336 pagina’s
- Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
- Prijs: $ 28,99
- Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris
Flaptekst van de historische roman van Nell Stevens
In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.
Brought to her uncle’s decaying Oxfordshire estate when she was a child, Grace has grown up on the periphery of a once-great household, an outsider in her own home. Now a self-possessed and secretive young woman, she has developed unusual predilections: for painting, particularly forgery; for deception; for other girls.
As Grace cultivates her talent as a copyist, she realizes that her uncanny ability to recreate paintings might offer her a means of escape. Secretly, she puts this skill to use as an art forger, creating fake masterpieces in candlelit corners of the estate. Saving the money she makes from her sales, she plans a new life far from the family that has never seemed to want her.
Then, a letter arrives from the South Atlantic. The writer claims to be her cousin Charles, long presumed dead at sea, who wishes to reconnect with his family. When Charles returns, Grace’s aunt welcomes him with open arms; yet fractures appear in the household. Some believe he is who he says he is. Others are convinced he’s an impostor. As a court date looms to determine his legitimacy—and his claim to the family fortune—Grace must decide what she believes, and what she’s willing to risk.
Is Charles really her cousin? An interloper? A mirror of her own ambitions? And in a house built on illusions, what does authenticity truly mean—in art, in love, and in family?
Deftly plotted and shimmering with Nell Stevens’s distinctive intelligence, style, and wit, The Original takes readers on an unforgettable adventure through a world of forgeries, family ties, and the fluctuations in fortune that can change our fate.
Nell Stevens is born in 1985. She is the author of Briefly, a Delicious Life and two memoirs, Bleaker House and The Victorian and the Romantic. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Warwick and lives in Oxfordshire, England.
