Attention Studies is a Physics Room initiative where a group of creative practitioners were selected to participate in a collaborative environment to produce a year’s worth of serial publications. Here is my second of two contributions to No.3. I’ve also linked the whole issue below so you can enjoy the variety of skilled writers!
May 2026
It was only after I finished The Original and it lingered for weeks in my psyche that I appreciated its value. Nell Stevens’ writing builds a high garden wall, just imposing enough to make you curious about what’s on the other side, wide enough to walk along the top of, but difficult to climb and easy to fall from. At each turn in the story I wondered, is this worth it? And then, what does that mean? At no point did I feel comfortable reading this book.
The Original follows a young protagonist heading through the turn of the twentieth century in rural (landed) England. Grace has lived with her aunt and uncle since she was a young girl after her parents were committed to an asylum. At the faded and grim, once-great house of Inderwick Hall, Grace takes solace in the friendship shared with her older and rebellious cousin Charles. Through her move to Inderwick and her relationship with Charles, Grace begins painting. In this triangle of circumstance, Grace’s suchness in the world meets a burgeoning anxiety as she begins to register her differences to those around her.
She has a wild talent at copying paintings that is counterbalanced by her face-blindness – something her parents covered for her and that Charles later recognised and helped her with. When he leaves for a long journey at sea, she navigates the fraught socio-political field of her extended family left to her her own devices: devices that Grace and her sickly aunt and accompanying band of lawyers must rely on when, after a thirteen-year absence, Charles suddenly returns to Inderwick. Unaware of her niece’s face-blindness, Grace must testify to her aunt, the lawyers and staff (and the reader) if this is indeed the real Charles or not.
Even as I hoped for Grace’s success and freedom, I found my head tilted sceptically to the side, my spine primed for flight. Like Inderwick Hall, the story was not inviting. The prose was lovely but dragging at times. I could stop, I told myself often, I do not have to finish this book if I am not enjoying it. But something was happening. As Grace tries to convince herself, among others, that it is or is not the real Charles, she uncovers masks and their attending truths. Through art and people she meets, the question ‘are you like me?’ repeats over and over. She paints empathetically, but for one reason or other struggles to read the same dynamic in people: a deeply recognisable human experience. Grace’s unease is mirrored by the reader – I found myself simultaneously inferring and forming my own thoughts but filtered through Grace’s perspective as she formed hers.
Stevens’ control of tone was the most consistent I had read in fiction for a long time. The story grew like oppressive weather. The atmosphere of the book shifts and rolls with an extended but unstoppable drop in air pressure. Deft and unpleasant, and successful in its insistence.
Meg Doughty / Nell Stevens, The Original, 2025.
meg doughty 