I inhaled this strange and shimmering novel in a single sitting.’ – AnOtherMagazine, Best Books of 2020 ‘Cain writes with elegance on art and friendship, creating a fictional world that feels more like a painting than a book. ‘This sparse, elliptical novel finds new complexities in the familiar conflict between creative independence and the lures of traditional domesticity.’ – The New Yorker

‘A novel that will get people talking… A Room of One’s Own with a few wicked twists.’ – New York Times ‘Despite its slimness and simple, measured prose, Indelicacy has a lot going on… explores vision, imagination and creativity in a continuous process of self-creation.’ - Herald ‘Cain’s writing feels more urgent than a lament on the gendered history of art writing… A Cinderella story, only with more bite.’ – Elephant Magazine ‘A slip of a novel, Indelicacy can easily be read in one sitting… Cain’s writing also feels brilliantly, eerily contemporary.’ – Vogue ‘Narrated with gnomic mystery as well as lethally disarming candour, it’s a slim novel with the heft of a much larger one.’ – Daily Mail ‘An extraordinary feminist fable about women and art.’– Irish Times ‘A thing of real delicacy, with a fine, distilled quality to the writing, every word precisely chosen, precisely placed.’ – Observer Our narrator is focused on the unshakeable drive to achieve self-determination and independence… there are remarkable things in this book.’ – Financial Times ‘Beguiling… casts aside conventions, explanations, detail.

‘Her bone-clean prose creates a sense of immersion in a story that feels both mythic and true… A woman’s search for creativity is not a new subject, yet Cain has made it so.’ – Guardian ‘Unfolds like a mesmerising dream.’ Celia Paul Indelicacy is an exquisite gem of a novel about class, desire, friendship, art, and the battle to find one’s true calling. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary? Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labour - social and erotic - but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find the way to win herself the security and time to use her mind. In an undefined era and place, a cleaning woman at a museum of art aspires to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021Īn elegant, haunting debut from an exciting new voice that reads like a modern classic

Amina cain indelicacy