Review: Long-missing man turns family's life upside-down in ‘The Original'
I'm sure there are more interpretations of that title in Nell Stevens' ("Briefly, a Delicious Life") tricky novel. Set in the late 19th century, it's a gothic tale that opens with a double bang: We're introduced to a family curse (because of a broken promise, Grace's family lacks male heirs) and a haunted, indestructible painting (the family burned it - only to have it "reappear" in what we know is actually Grace's re-creation).
The instigating event in "The Original" is Charles' return. Is he who he claims to be or a fortune hunter, bent on claiming an inheritance? But the spine of the book is Grace's story, as she figures out what she wants in a society that forbids her to do much of anything.
Grace's singular quality is that she cannot recognize faces. It's a disaster when she attempts to paint portraits but a superpower when she turns to forging great works by Vermeer, Velázquez and others. Instead of worrying over facial expressions in canvases, she simply reproduces brushstrokes and colors with a kind of paintographic memory.
She does something similar with the people around her, whom she learns to recognize by voices and mannerisms. Our narrator, Grace seems able to tumble immediately to the central truths of things. Maybe it doesn't matter if Charles is an impostor if he's essentially a good person? And maybe it doesn't matter if that painting hanging in a collector's home is a real or fake Botticelli - as long as they find it beautiful?
Like TV's "Mad Men‚" "The Original" exists in a between place that takes place in its own time but asks us to weigh its depiction of the past against the present. Stevens' book, divided into brief cleverly-titled chapters, is attentive to the language and manners of England's late Victorian era while also looking ahead.
We're aware that bygone times can be disconcerting (expectant mothers smoking on "Mad Men," anyone?) but also that plenty of stuff happened that never made it into the novels of Thomas Hardy or Oscar Wilde, who wrote in the period when "The Original" takes place.
This wouldn't have made their books, for instance, but when Grace falls for a noblewoman named Ruby, the love that dare not speak its name is depicted with restraint and secrecy:
"'Are you like me?' she said.
'I nodded. 'Yes.'
'Good.'"
When a century dawns, there's always talk of new ideas and trends, but Stevens knows that many of them have always been there, waiting for us to recognize them. Her Grace is a fascinating, un-self-pitying heroine, who tells us she will be ready for the world when it is ready for her:
"Surely, surely something now had to change. I thought this daily. I tried to stay warm. I planned my own plans, worked on my own work secretively, as I did everything."
____
The Original
By: Nell Stevens.
Publisher: Norton, 328 pages.
Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
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Degreff comes from a family of contractors, so it was a no-brainer for her to hire her uncle, Pat Gordon Contracting, for the project. She also worked with James Joyce Architect, and she tapped Weathertop Masonry to find brick that would match the home's existing stonework. The arch was the most difficult aspect of the renovation to create. Like the rest of the house, the arch was raised off the ground, and stairs led to the platform entrance. The arch pointed at the top, while the door beneath was designed with a round window atop it for contrast. Degreff told BI that Weathertop Masonry was integral to creating the archway, which was almost entirely made of brick and stone. She said the team initially tried to find vintage bricks to match the house, and when that didn't work, Degreff said Paul Scanio, Weathertop Masonry's president, got creative. "We ended up ordering a blend of two or three different types of brick, and the way that he grabbed and picked each brick, it mixed it in a way that made it look exactly like the old brick on my house," Degreff said. Degreff chose custom tile for the interior of the mudroom. Degreff said she spent "hours and hours" researching tiles before selecting a green, patterned set from London Mosaic. The tile was laid in August, and Degreff held off decorating the rest of the space until January 2025, getting used to it before deciding how to finish it. When Degreff finished the mudroom, green was integral to the design. Thanks to the arch, the inside of the mudroom has high ceilings, and Degreff played up that height by painting the walls and ceilings a deep green. A textured light hangs from the ceiling, and the window above the door lets in natural light. There's a second door that leads to the living room, making the main house warmer. Degreff added a bench to the entryway. When you enter the mudroom, the long-awaited coat closet sits on the right, but the left side was a blank canvas for Degreff to decorate. "I knew I wanted to do a bench seating with a little open shelf, something that I could restyle seasonally, and a spot to hang extra stuff," she told BI. She did the work on the corner herself, adding paneling to the wall behind and next to the bench for some texture. A wooden shelf floated above the bench, and Degreff added hooks to the wall for jackets and purses. Degreff said the mudroom is already making her home more functional. "It's so nice," Degreff said of having a mudroom. "This was the first winter that we walked into having a mudroom, and it's just so much easier having a place to put the kids' sports bags and hang up our coats." "For work, I have a lot of random props that I get, and I have a closet space there now," she added. "It's not just sitting by the front door in the middle of the living room." The archway also improved the home's curb appeal, as Degreff's neighbors can attest. The arch drastically changed the house's appearance, but Degreff said all the work they did on the exterior in 2024 improved its curb appeal. "We were adding sod, we added a fence, we added landscaping, so the arch is just like a piece of other things that definitely made the house more attractive from the outside," she said. Degreff said people who live in her community noticed the upgrades. "The amount of neighbors that are excited about it has also been really cute," Degreff said. "I have at least one neighbor every day, and it's been a year, that's like, 'Your house came out so great. I love how it looks.'" She feels like the exterior finally matches the interior. "Nobody realized that it was cute inside because it had sad grass and it was just so dumpy outside, and now I feel like people get it," she said. "When we first did the renovation, people asked me when I moved in and welcomed me to the neighborhood because they thought I had just bought the house and started to fix it up." She also has fun changing up her doorway seasonally. Degreff has been switching up the decor out front to match the season. "Decorating it every season has been so fun," she said. "I put leaves around the arch for fall last year, and then I did garlands and lights for Christmas, and it's just fun and festive." She told BI that she's also "constantly" repainting the front door. Degreff knows repainting it so often might lead to wear and tear long-term, but she considers it a work expense because so much of her content revolves around her house. "I sand it in between, but it does get thick. It's definitely a casualty, and I look at it as a business expense at this point," she said. "Worst case scenario, I will, in five years, get a different door and start from scratch. There's nothing saying the door has to be forever." Having a clear vision helped Degreff bring her renovation to life. Degreff didn't have an exact cost breakdown for her mudroom and arch renovation because she and her husband also had work done on their driveway and other parts of their home. Still, she recommends people estimate between $50,000 and $70,000 if they want to take on a similar project. She also said that people who plan to take on similar projects should have a clear vision for their transformation. "I think my best advice would be to go on Pinterest and take a look at all the elements that you want to have in your space, whether it's a bench seating area when you walk in or a special kind of tile or special window," she said. "When you hire a contractor, they're just carrying out your vision. If you don't go into it with the vision, then you're not going to get exactly what you want." "The first time I renovated, I definitely didn't do enough research or planning, and there are things that I would do differently," Degreff said. "But with the arch, I 100% feel like it's exactly everything I wanted and hoped and dreamed."
