The Original
A Novel
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4.0 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
One of the Washington Post's "Notable Works of Fiction" for 2025
One of Literary Hub's Favorite Books of 2025
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This lush, gothic-tinged historical mystery explores art and identity in fascinating ways. After the loss of her parents, Grace Inderwick grew up on her wealthy aunt and uncle’s Victorian estate. Treated with frosty disdain by the family, Grace cultivates a quiet persona that hides both her uncanny gift for forging paintings and her attraction to women. But when a stranger claiming to be Grace’s only childhood friend, her long-lost cousin Charles, appears after 13 years away, his presence upends both the family and her fragile inner life. Nell Stevens writes with a skill for unsettling atmosphere and an eye for beauty. Grace’s intense feelings about art also read as a code for her carefully concealed sexuality in a way that seems true to the novel’s time and place. The Original is a novel about authenticity: of paintings, of people, and of how we shape the stories we’re allowed to tell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stevens (Briefly, a Delicious Life) crafts an accomplished portrait of an art forger and the dubious return of her long-lost aristocratic cousin in 1899. Sixteen years earlier, Grace, now 25, was sent to live at Inderwick Hall in Oxfordshire with her aunt, uncle, and cousins after her parents were committed to an insane asylum. Growing up on the vast estate, Grace felt like "a person who belonged nowhere," and became a skilled copyist with help from her cousin Charles, a painter. Charles was presumed dead at sea at 17, three years after Grace moved into the house. Now, he's written to his only surviving family, Grace and his mother, calling them to Rome where he is recovering from illness. Many, including the family's lawyer, Mr. George, question Charles's true motives, given his position as heir of the family's estate. Meanwhile, Grace, who's expected to be married off to a man, grapples with her preference for women, and falls for the daughter of an artist brought in to verify Charles's claims by examining his paintings. As the brisk plot unfolds in chapters alternating between the perspectives of Grace and the presumed Charles, Stevens raises thorny questions about the nature of art and identity. This will stay with readers.
