Nightshade

Starred review from May 15, 2020
Walking across London after dark, an artist reviews her past and fears the future in McAfee's pitch-black new novel. Eve Laing grows and then paints plants in jewellike works that have garnered her some success but also condescension as a dainty, feminine artist. This infuriates her almost as much as the fame of her one-time friend, a confessional performance artist Eve dissed years ago with a widely reprinted wisecrack: "Wanda Wilson's sole talent is for monstrous self-pity." She'll live to regret that remark in the jaw-dropping finale to a masterfully orchestrated narrative that fully justifies its pervasive atmosphere of lurking dread. When we meet Eve, she's looking through the window of the town house where she used to live with her husband, Kristof. Eve left him five months ago, consumed by her new project and by Luka, the young assistant who has become her lover. At 60, Eve has decided to finally silence her patronizing critics with Poison Florilegium, a seven-panel depiction of deadly plants "lovely as their innocent sisters, venomous as snakes"; she views it as a tribute to "all those female artists...who laboured in the shadows." As her memories unfold during her walk, we learn that Eve's bitter determination stems from ancient wounds: an unhappy childhood, a humiliating affair with her famous art teacher, frustrations as a wife and mother. These injuries have rendered her both cruel and vindictive: "stringy Nancy, with her unfortunate recessive chin" is among Eve's kindest comments about her daughter; and her revenge on an old friend who had a fling with Kristof is shockingly excessive. Eve isn't meant to be likable--McAfee's whip-smart text implicitly makes the point that no one objects to male artists being selfish and unkind--but she's desperately human. We understand her rage and wince at her blindness to the dangers right under her nose in a text as studded with red-flag clues as it is with penetrating insights. A brilliant character study encased in a gripping plot with a fabulous final twist.

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June 15, 2020
McAfee (Hame) centers her caustically entertaining latest on Eve, a self-aggrandizing middle-aged antiheroine obsessed with her thwarted artistic vision. Eve’s story begins at the garden of her former home and unfolds on her peripatetic journey through London’s unfriendly streets. The trip allows Eve to consider her ambition to be more than a “flower painter,” a status gained through the two works for which she is best known: Girl with a Flower, a famous portrait featuring Eve as a youthful, submissive muse, and Underground Florilegium, Eve’s “first major work... much reproduced, copied, and pirated.” Now, at 60 years old, Eve acidly recollects the obstacles to her artistry—exploitative friends and fellow artists, callous reviewers to whom she is mere “ape of nature,” a famous husband, an insipid daughter, a disloyal assistant, a visionless agent. She also ruminates on Poison Florilegium, a painting she wishes to compose that would be “monumental in scale” and depict flowering Swiss meadows where Alpine flowers are replaced with “the deadliest plants.” This, “nature’s most vicious prank,” would, Eve believes, redeem her and, by proxy, all of history’s thwarted and overlooked women artists. The painting becomes Eve’s singular, myopic focus, reawakening her passions but blinding her to the machinations of those around her. Eve’s obsessive self-absorption and ambition make this a pleasing investigation of the limits of artistic influence.

August 28, 2020

As depicted by McAfee (Hame), mean-spirited rivalry is the chief motivator in the contemporary art world, and Eve Laing, a noted artist of botanical works, has had to struggle for her success and acceptance. She is married to internationally famous architect Kristof Axness who has many extramarital affairs and totally ignores her artwork. Now at 60, Eve takes much younger assistant Luka as a lover, and her creative powers are rejuvenated as she works on paintings of poisonous plants, the culmination of her artistic passion. The relationship is a life-changer, and she decides to discard Kristof. Unfortunately, Wanda Wilson, a performance artist of questionable talent but enormous ambition, is discovered to be behind Luka's presence at Eve's studio, and her schemes attack Eve on every level as deadly nightshade plays a pivotal role in the suspenseful climax of this fantastic story. VERDICT McAfee delivers a spellbinding tale exploring the price artists, and especially female artists, must pay to achieve their ambitions, with issues of sexual politics, marriage, and children folded into the mix. Highly recommended and an exceptional choice for discussion groups.--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

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