Alex Hyde's second novel, a Künstlerroman set against a lightly fictionalised version of London's 1990s YBA art scene, traces the entangled relationship between two artists whose identities blur through their creative collaboration. The book explores how the collapse of postwar public institutions gave way to individualised, confessional artistic capital, using the era's cultural shift as a backdrop for a more intimate story of selfhood, co-option and creative partnership.

The novel follows Rabble Stone, a working-class photography student who moves to London and becomes entangled with a wealthy, cosmopolitan artistic set, including an unnamed, now-deceased artist to whom the book is addressed in elegiac reminiscences. Rabble's photographs of the artist are incorporated into the artist's paintings, echoing Tracey Emin's trajectory from art-world curiosity to global market commodity; the review praises Hyde's tender, rhythmic prose on bodily exhaustion and addiction, while noting some thematic predictability and occasional stylistic imprecision.