As someone who read and loved Nell Stevens’s previous historical novel, Briefly, a Delicious Life (2022), I was eagerly anticipating her latest release, The Original (Norton, 2025), and it did not disappoint!
Set primarily in England in 1899, Grace is the longtime ward of her uncle’s family on their once-grand estate. After her parents were sent to mental institutions, Grace was sent to live on the periphery of a seemingly perfect family invested in keeping up appearances—which do not include the unwanted child of mad parents. Living a mostly solitary life, Grace has unusual desires: she has a passion for painting, particularly art forgery, and a passion for other girls. She dreams of having enough money of her own to forge a path for herself outside of her estranged family’s influence.
But her life, and the lives of her uncle’s family, is turned upside down when a letter arrives from the South Atlantic from a man who claimed to be her long-lost cousin, Charles, who has for years been presumed dead at sea. When he returns to what he claims is his home, the family fractures into those who believe he is an imposter, and those who insist he could be none other than the man he claims to be. Perhaps no one in the family has better knowledge of fakes than Grace, but even she is pulled in different directions as she must decide what she believes. In her pursuit of the truth—or of the lie—Grace uncovers secrets of money, family, art, and identity that force her to decide on her own place in the world.
I loved this novel as much as I expected to. Nell Stevens knows how to hook a reader into a world full of strangeness and historical intrigue. The opening of The Original is one of my favourite parts of this novel. She takes the storied family history and shakes out some of its darkest—and queerest!—family secrets. No one is without something to hide in this book, and Stevens somehow writes with a prose that is both propulsive and emotional. One of the tricks of a novel like this is to balance the central questions (in this case: is Charles really Grace’s cousin?) without leaning too far one way so as to leave the reader guessing as well. I felt compelled to know how this story ended alongside Grace, who was an interesting and introspective protagonist.
The use of art in The Original was exciting. Each painting and Grace’s careful consideration of it brought the images to life even as the paintings were used to think through ideas of authenticity, imitation, and forgery. I loved the double plot of Grace’s ambitions and Charles’s identity and the ways they wove together and also diverged throughout the novel. The Original is carefully executed and, to me, becomes its own masterpiece as a result.
I highly recommend The Original for lovers of lesbian historical and literary fiction. It’s the perfect novel to read this summer and if you love Stevens’s other writing, you won’t be disappointed!
Please add The Original to your TBR on Goodreads and see follow Nell Stevens on Instagram.
Content Warnings: violence, death, homophobia.
Rachel Friars received her doctorate in English Literature Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada in 2024. Her current research centers on neo-Victorianism and lesbian literature and history. Her work has been published with journals such as Studies in the Novel, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorianism.
You can find Rachel on X @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.
