Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction, The Artist and the Feast is a captivating novel of love, art, food, desire and thwarted ambition, which builds propulsively over one scorching French summer in 1920s Provence.
During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him. There, he meets Ettie, Tartuffe’s niece, who appears to do everything for her uncle—from cooking and cleaning to catering to his maniacal moods. Joseph is beguiled by where he finds himself, not just by this foreign place or Tartuffe himself, but by Ettie, who watches everything so quietly from the periphery. Both Joseph and Ettie carry scars from their pasts and it’s as they get to know each other that they start to lay bare those scars to themselves and to each other.
As the summer wears on, and as new ideas and passions are explored, Joseph, Ettie, and Tartuffe are propelled toward a finale that reveals long-held secrets and sets the world on fire.
Fans of Sarah Winman’s Still Life and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife will be enchanted by this compelling novel.
Genre: Historical
During a scorching summer in 1920s Provence, a young journalist, Joseph Adelaide, turns up at the farmhouse of reclusive artist Edouard Tartuffe, hoping to write an article about him. There, he meets Ettie, Tartuffe’s niece, who appears to do everything for her uncle—from cooking and cleaning to catering to his maniacal moods. Joseph is beguiled by where he finds himself, not just by this foreign place or Tartuffe himself, but by Ettie, who watches everything so quietly from the periphery. Both Joseph and Ettie carry scars from their pasts and it’s as they get to know each other that they start to lay bare those scars to themselves and to each other.
As the summer wears on, and as new ideas and passions are explored, Joseph, Ettie, and Tartuffe are propelled toward a finale that reveals long-held secrets and sets the world on fire.
Fans of Sarah Winman’s Still Life and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife will be enchanted by this compelling novel.
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"Phenomenal . . . beautiful, pacey historical fiction, vividly realised. It drifts with the scent of summer, the land lit up and throbbing, the food piled high and richly painted, the paint as thick and buttery as food. I wanted to eat it. Yes, I even wanted to eat the paint. Read this book!" - Seth Insua
"I could not love this beautiful novel more . . . the final chapters left me with that delicious heart-bursting feeling, full of hope and delight." - Florence Knapp
"Gorgeous . . . Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning. The questions it asks will linger with me: about authenticity, about what it means to be an artist and to long to leave a mark on the world." - Elizabeth Macneal
"Lucy Steeds transports the reader with her sensuous depictions of food, art, and landscape . . . an assured and atmospheric debut about creativity, female agency, and the legacy of war." - Sarah Perry
"The Artist is an intoxicating tale of creativity, possession and freedom told by the alternate voices of a young English writer and a French woman who have been drawn into the orbit of a celebrated but reclusive artist. As they circle around him during one hot summer in Provence, both his secrets and theirs slowly come into the light. This is a compelling, beautifully textured and impressively assured debut about the risks we take to get what we want, a novel which asks questions about all those who are painted over by history." - Joanna Quinn
"A furiously romantic, sun-drenched mystery about the violent power of good art. The Artist will leave you yearning in every sense of the word." - Yael van der Wouden
"I could not love this beautiful novel more . . . the final chapters left me with that delicious heart-bursting feeling, full of hope and delight." - Florence Knapp
"Gorgeous . . . Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning. The questions it asks will linger with me: about authenticity, about what it means to be an artist and to long to leave a mark on the world." - Elizabeth Macneal
"Lucy Steeds transports the reader with her sensuous depictions of food, art, and landscape . . . an assured and atmospheric debut about creativity, female agency, and the legacy of war." - Sarah Perry
"The Artist is an intoxicating tale of creativity, possession and freedom told by the alternate voices of a young English writer and a French woman who have been drawn into the orbit of a celebrated but reclusive artist. As they circle around him during one hot summer in Provence, both his secrets and theirs slowly come into the light. This is a compelling, beautifully textured and impressively assured debut about the risks we take to get what we want, a novel which asks questions about all those who are painted over by history." - Joanna Quinn
"A furiously romantic, sun-drenched mystery about the violent power of good art. The Artist will leave you yearning in every sense of the word." - Yael van der Wouden
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