Jessica's TOP 5 in 2025 | The Original - Nell Stevens

Jessica says... Witty, intelligent and intellectually captivating - full of insights into art history, queer history and class dynamics, as well as brilliantly paced and thrillingly plotted. Grace and Charles (or is he??) are fantastic main characters, both studies in what we reveal and what we hide. Simply fabulous!

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Oxfordshire, 1899. Grace Inderwick grows up on the peripheries of a once-great household, an unwanted guest in her uncle’s home.

She has unusual skills and unusual predilections: for painting, though faces elude her; for lurking in the shadows; for other girls.  Then a letter arrives, postmarked Saint Helena. After years missing at sea, Grace’s cousin Charles is ready to come home.

When Charles returns, unrecognisable and uncanny, a rift emerges between those who claim he is an imposter and Grace’s aunt, who insists he is her son. And Grace, whose intimate knowledge of forgeries is her own closely-guarded secret, must decide who and what to believe in, and what kind of life she wants to live.  Deftly-plotted and shimmering with Nell Stevens’s distinctive intelligence, style and wit, THE ORIGINAL is a novel about the value of authenticity in art and in love, and what it means to be a true original.