The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart
It took me a while to get into The Underpainter. The narrator isn’t sympathetic. He’s emotionless, which turns out to be the point, so it works eventually, but at the start the story just seemed flat and lacking in emotion. I got more interested as the book went on and was reading pretty enthusiastically by the end, but it’s always difficult when the narrator is unlikeable.
The writing was good, poetic in places. The story was odd but believable because the characters were odd but believable. I enjoyed this book but wouldn’t necessarily run out to read another of hers.