The Artist's Widow

Ann Prichard

Mackay's book is most entertaining, a hybrid mix of Jane Austen, minus the scope, and Evelyn Waugh, minus the mania. It makes for fine, midsummer night readings.
— US Today

Paul Baumann

No one who shed a tear over the cruelly publicized life, loves and death of Diana, Princess of Wales, should open it....When [Mackay] casts her gimlet eye on the characters in her latest novel, she aims both to amuse and to unnerve. And she largely succeeds....Here is a world of recognizable modern solipsists who, given countless opportunities to make the small, necessary human gesture, unfailingly resort to the counterfeit.
—New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Few writers are as adept as Mackay (The Orchard on Fire ) in summing up temperament, appearance and motivation in the space of one spare, stunning sentence. Here her gimlet eye focuses on a dozen London characters whose relationship to Lyris Crane, the eponymous artist's widow, brings them into juxtaposition. In addition to mourning the recent death of her husband, John, Lyris fears the loss of her own creativity as a painter. She suffers through a posthumous show of John's last works in an acid-etched scene in which establishment figures of the British art world and untalented and opportunistic wannabes mingle and try to impress each other. Lyris's great-nephew Nathan Pursley, a louche, ignorant and nervy fellow who styles himself a conceptual artist, is part of a circle of self-indulgent, obnoxious, vulgar young artists whom Mackay skewers with rapier wit. Other characters come from a range of Britain's social classes. Although most of them exhibit a credible mix of foibles, pretensions and misplaced love, one or two verge on caricature. Besides Lyris, the only likable characters are a working-class couple whose kindness to Lyris reflects true gentility of spirit, and a bookstore owner adrift in indecision. The plot affords a panoramic view of the lives of these representative Londoners during the stifling August that preceded the death of Princess Di. As her characters experience the insecurities of youth, the crises of the middle years and the regrets of old age, Mackay explores the issues of artistic creativity, moral values and friendship. She writes in language as quick and lethal as a snake's tongue; the best scene is a dinner party where everybody behaves badly and the dialogue is hilarious. No startling life passages occur here, just a not-so-gentle sliding from one stage to another. The sadness at the narrative's core is beautifully controlled; the wit is buoyant. (July)

Paul Baumann

No one who shed a tear over the cruelly publicized life, loves and death of Diana, Princess of Wales, should open it....When [Mackay] casts her gimlet eye on the characters in her latest novel, she aims both to amuse and to unnerve. And she largely succeeds....Here is a world of recognizable modern solipsists who, given countless opportunities to make the small, necessary human gesture, unfailingly resort to the counterfeit.
— The New York Times Book Review

Richard Eder

...[S]he locates truths that even she does not know....[This is] writing that can be sheer magic in short bursts and comically unexpected in longer ones....The abiding theme...is the portrait of Lyris..rallying against sorrow, solitude, frailty, the drifts of confusion that intermittently cloud a sharp vision and...fear...
— The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

The opening of a retrospective showing of an artist's paintings at a London gallery results in a refreshingly sharp study of hypocrisy and hustling. John Crane wasn't an especially celebrated painter while alive, but his death sets in motion a series of attempts to cash in on what he's left behind. For the studiedly shabby and ambitious Nathan Pursey, a self-styled conceptual artist, a resurgence of interest in Crane might mean a chance to leverage himself into a gallery show of his own. For his ruthless family, it might mean a chance to move in on their aging relative, Crane's widow Lyris, and take control of the couple's London house, as well as their art collection. For Zoe, a young, breezily amoral would-be film producer, it means a chance to talk Lyris, herself an accomplished painter, into becoming the subject of a documentary about women artists who have been unfairly eclipsed by the reputations of their mates; it's a work that, she is convinced, will make her reputation. Various other equally hectic and self-obsessed characters are drawn into these machinations. Meanwhile, Lyris, struggling to take back control of her life, receives help from an unlikely source: Jacki, an ex-girlfriend of Nathan's, shows up on her doorstep, looking for a place to stay—and more pressingly for an identity. She has, it turns out, been passing herself off as the child of black immigrants, when in fact she is a member of a white working-class family. Under Lyris's tutelage, she begins to come into her own—and gives Lyris the ally she needs to confound those striving to use her. Mackay (An Advent Calendar, 1997, etc.) has, of all the younger British novelists, the most pronouncedappetite for satire. The portrait of modern poseurs on the art scene, and of old-fashioned greed, is concise and droll. And she demonstrates a quite original sense of pacing: the scenes here are short, clipped, and more suggestive than descriptive, making for a swift but engaging pace. A very funny, and ultimately moving, portrait of an aging artist reclaiming her identity.