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Exhibition
Amid the heady rebellion of London's Young British Artists, Rabble Stone, a photographer, meets the artist, a painter, after renting a room in her Brixton home. Soon Rabble is in thrall to this new to the run-down glamour of the Victorian house; to the exhilarating and debauched gallery openings, and to those in the artist's orbit, beautiful and lost. Above all, she is drawn to her new friend's work; raw, unfiltered self-portraits of startling intimacy, which Rabble captures in her uncompromising photographs. But as Rabble's longing tips into obsession, her pursuit of the artist - her fame, her wealth, her life - threatens to consume her.
Travelling from London to Algiers, to Berlin and New York, Exhibition is a story of love, ego and destruction, and the dark relationship between authenticity and celebrity, artist and muse.
Travelling from London to Algiers, to Berlin and New York, Exhibition is a story of love, ego and destruction, and the dark relationship between authenticity and celebrity, artist and muse.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 2, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 13, 2026
If I knew this was a second person narration, I never would have picked this up. I feel when authors make this decision, they are narrowing down their audience. It's a difficult perspective to follow.
We are in the head of Rabble Stone, and we spend a lot of time with, and spend a lot of time thinking about, someone referred to as You.
I could never get a handle on who Rabble was, I couldn't even tell you their gender. Likewise, I never really got a handle on who You is either however You was definitely a female.
And that's second person narration for you. Readers spend 250 pages with You and I and leave with zero idea on what went on.
There's a lot of art and photography going on here, a lot of posing for photos and laying around in sweat pondering. I do wonder if the prose was deliberately inaccessible in the way some forms of art are.
Either way, I wasn't a fan.
One star.
We are in the head of Rabble Stone, and we spend a lot of time with, and spend a lot of time thinking about, someone referred to as You.
I could never get a handle on who Rabble was, I couldn't even tell you their gender. Likewise, I never really got a handle on who You is either however You was definitely a female.
And that's second person narration for you. Readers spend 250 pages with You and I and leave with zero idea on what went on.
There's a lot of art and photography going on here, a lot of posing for photos and laying around in sweat pondering. I do wonder if the prose was deliberately inaccessible in the way some forms of art are.
Either way, I wasn't a fan.
One star.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Because of you –always the object of the gaze. But me? I’m the frame.
Exhibition is Alex Hyde's second novel after her Desmond Elliott Prize longlisted debut Violets.
The novel is narrated by Rabble Stone and is addressed by her to an unnamed, successful but now deceased artist. It opens with Rabble at an 'auction house of global renown':
As soon as you died, you were worth ten times the price. Two point three million pounds.
[...]
I like to be here. To watch the work convert to zeros, to watch it disappear.
But much of the novel has Rabble remembering how she and the artist met - at art school, and through a mutual friend, Duncan, who himself knew the artist from their time at nearby private schools, her a (I think ficticious) French boarding school in South Ken, he at (the real) SPS, a school Rabble, from a working class background in Manchester, has not heard of:
St Paul's you said, as if I knew where it was
Dramatic pause while I waited for you to explain
Private school for gifted boys.
Rabble, a photographer, ends up lodging with the artist, and the photos she takes of her work are incorporated, indeed appropriated albeit with Rabble's permission, into her final portfolio at college and later into her increasingly successful work.
The three go their separate ways after college - the artist to international success initially in Berlin; Duncan into ultimately fatal drug addiction; and Rabble back home, where she works as a technician in the college.
But after the artist moves to New York, some years later Rabble decides to go there and finds her way back into her circle and ultimately her, far more upmarket now, studio cum apartment, and essentially becomes both an assistant but also her muse. The artist's last works, which she examines retrospectively:
And I can see you there, now. Somewhere in the brawl, in the sprawl of the paintings, is you. The you I used to know, indanthrene blue. A crackled glaze of paint that dried, blood-red beneath. So much blood that I think of you, briefly, beaten to death. Like you'd battered the canvas with your fists, trying to get in, or trying to get out. The way it purples here, like a bruise. Like a thick thwack to your jaw, the thud of a fat brush, the stroke caught on the friction of the cloth. Which makes me think that the brush, when you swept it down, made a rasping sound.
A dry fuck.
One after the other, the paintings piled up, your body moving, daubed in paint, your knuckles trailing, a tangle of wet black hair. The black sky, the blood below. I think now, it was there.
But how could we have known?
This last one, blood red, done all in a rush. Gold, or a metallic sheen, and the last mark you made was everything you'd ever been.
And when the artist dies - a (to me slightly overdramatic) event foreshadowed in the opening words, but only reached at the end of the novel - Rabble becomes her artistic executor.
This is a fascinating dual character study, of both the artist and also Rabble, at once overshadowed by her (her photos are presented by the artist as her own, with Rabble given a small acknowledgement by name in the catalogues) but ultimately ending as the sole survivor of the three and in control of the work and legacy, as the opening quote suggests - and indeed in control of the narration we are reading (which opens some interesting potential interpretations).
The author has drawn heavily and explicitly on the Young British Artist scene, their work as well as their lives, Tracey Emin in particular, as well as the work of other artists, and an afterword cites the artists and their specific works, some of which are more explicit than others in the text. For example:
Yes, I looked. As the water rained down from above, where the blue-black lines feather at the edge, then pool in a mess. Matter and text, mound of belly; pubis. Sad rain down, you said. In a line, onto your flesh. Feathered lines, and your bowed head.
The way the shoulders slide down so that everything is flowing away into the drain; framed by the straight spindle of a line, a sharp decisive point inscribed to pick up ink. But if you follow them, the lines, they are impossible to reconcile or resolve into a shape that might be, for example, a knee, a hip.
And the water running down, everything dragged by a single line, ending in a pool. Ending in a scribble on the floor. Also your feet like you'd run out of time or didn't care - never did
- for what was anatomically correct, like figuration was not important. (That's what they said of your work, its lack of polish was its strength, its immediacy - not the body but the feeling, the event of the print.)
But I digress.
Because in the end, there is just the sharp object that digs in, makes its mark. The pencil, the point, the blade; the concentrated look on your face leaning over the paper and peeling it back. And all I see is that single line down, the drop, the flow of your life away, long ago, before, again and again, until the end.
Sad shower in New York.
Emin's work as catalogued at the Tate: Sad Shower in New York, 1995.
A book that immediately made me want to visit the Tate and Emin's A Second Life exhibition, although the juxtaposition of a real artist's work with fictional lives (each of Rabble and the artist have aspects of her, but both are different and fully formed characters) is a slightly odd one. However, a worthwhile novel.
Exhibition is Alex Hyde's second novel after her Desmond Elliott Prize longlisted debut Violets.
The novel is narrated by Rabble Stone and is addressed by her to an unnamed, successful but now deceased artist. It opens with Rabble at an 'auction house of global renown':
As soon as you died, you were worth ten times the price. Two point three million pounds.
[...]
I like to be here. To watch the work convert to zeros, to watch it disappear.
But much of the novel has Rabble remembering how she and the artist met - at art school, and through a mutual friend, Duncan, who himself knew the artist from their time at nearby private schools, her a (I think ficticious) French boarding school in South Ken, he at (the real) SPS, a school Rabble, from a working class background in Manchester, has not heard of:
St Paul's you said, as if I knew where it was
Dramatic pause while I waited for you to explain
Private school for gifted boys.
Rabble, a photographer, ends up lodging with the artist, and the photos she takes of her work are incorporated, indeed appropriated albeit with Rabble's permission, into her final portfolio at college and later into her increasingly successful work.
The three go their separate ways after college - the artist to international success initially in Berlin; Duncan into ultimately fatal drug addiction; and Rabble back home, where she works as a technician in the college.
But after the artist moves to New York, some years later Rabble decides to go there and finds her way back into her circle and ultimately her, far more upmarket now, studio cum apartment, and essentially becomes both an assistant but also her muse. The artist's last works, which she examines retrospectively:
And I can see you there, now. Somewhere in the brawl, in the sprawl of the paintings, is you. The you I used to know, indanthrene blue. A crackled glaze of paint that dried, blood-red beneath. So much blood that I think of you, briefly, beaten to death. Like you'd battered the canvas with your fists, trying to get in, or trying to get out. The way it purples here, like a bruise. Like a thick thwack to your jaw, the thud of a fat brush, the stroke caught on the friction of the cloth. Which makes me think that the brush, when you swept it down, made a rasping sound.
A dry fuck.
One after the other, the paintings piled up, your body moving, daubed in paint, your knuckles trailing, a tangle of wet black hair. The black sky, the blood below. I think now, it was there.
But how could we have known?
This last one, blood red, done all in a rush. Gold, or a metallic sheen, and the last mark you made was everything you'd ever been.
And when the artist dies - a (to me slightly overdramatic) event foreshadowed in the opening words, but only reached at the end of the novel - Rabble becomes her artistic executor.
This is a fascinating dual character study, of both the artist and also Rabble, at once overshadowed by her (her photos are presented by the artist as her own, with Rabble given a small acknowledgement by name in the catalogues) but ultimately ending as the sole survivor of the three and in control of the work and legacy, as the opening quote suggests - and indeed in control of the narration we are reading (which opens some interesting potential interpretations).
The author has drawn heavily and explicitly on the Young British Artist scene, their work as well as their lives, Tracey Emin in particular, as well as the work of other artists, and an afterword cites the artists and their specific works, some of which are more explicit than others in the text. For example:
Yes, I looked. As the water rained down from above, where the blue-black lines feather at the edge, then pool in a mess. Matter and text, mound of belly; pubis. Sad rain down, you said. In a line, onto your flesh. Feathered lines, and your bowed head.
The way the shoulders slide down so that everything is flowing away into the drain; framed by the straight spindle of a line, a sharp decisive point inscribed to pick up ink. But if you follow them, the lines, they are impossible to reconcile or resolve into a shape that might be, for example, a knee, a hip.
And the water running down, everything dragged by a single line, ending in a pool. Ending in a scribble on the floor. Also your feet like you'd run out of time or didn't care - never did
- for what was anatomically correct, like figuration was not important. (That's what they said of your work, its lack of polish was its strength, its immediacy - not the body but the feeling, the event of the print.)
But I digress.
Because in the end, there is just the sharp object that digs in, makes its mark. The pencil, the point, the blade; the concentrated look on your face leaning over the paper and peeling it back. And all I see is that single line down, the drop, the flow of your life away, long ago, before, again and again, until the end.
Sad shower in New York.
Emin's work as catalogued at the Tate: Sad Shower in New York, 1995.
A book that immediately made me want to visit the Tate and Emin's A Second Life exhibition, although the juxtaposition of a real artist's work with fictional lives (each of Rabble and the artist have aspects of her, but both are different and fully formed characters) is a slightly odd one. However, a worthwhile novel.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Some novels are less interested in telling a story than in documenting a slow emotional erosion. Exhibition feels exactly like that: intimate, intelligent, and quietly corrosive.
Set against the chaotic glamour of the Young British Artists movement, the novel explores the uneasy space between artist and muse, intimacy and exploitation, admiration and self-erasure. What begins as fascination gradually curdles into something more obsessive, exposing the emotional imbalances hidden beneath artistic collaboration and creative ambition.
What struck me most was the way Alex Hyde writes longing — not as something dramatic or openly confessed, but as a force that quietly reshapes a person from the inside. Rabble’s narration carries a constant sense of displacement, as though she is forever circling a life she wants proximity to but can never fully inhabit. The emotional restraint of the novel makes its sharper moments land with even greater force.
The fragmented narrative structure works particularly well here. Memory, desire, and artistic identity bleed into one another until it becomes difficult to separate genuine connection from performance. The novel repeatedly asks who gets authorship, who gets recognition, and what it means to become invisible inside someone else’s mythology.
I also appreciated the novel’s refusal to romanticize the art world. Beneath the gallery openings, fame, and carefully cultivated aesthetic rebellion is something much harsher: exploitation disguised as collaboration, intimacy treated as material, and people consumed in the process of becoming culturally valuable. Hyde captures the unsettling relationship between authenticity and celebrity with remarkable precision.
The prose itself feels appropriately raw and observational, often reading like a series of photographs left slightly overexposed. Even in its quieter moments, there is a persistent emotional tension underneath the surface.
Readers drawn to psychologically layered literary fiction, artistic obsession, morally ambiguous relationships, and stories that interrogate performance and identity will likely find much to admire here.
This is ultimately a novel about what happens when admiration becomes a form of disappearance.
Set against the chaotic glamour of the Young British Artists movement, the novel explores the uneasy space between artist and muse, intimacy and exploitation, admiration and self-erasure. What begins as fascination gradually curdles into something more obsessive, exposing the emotional imbalances hidden beneath artistic collaboration and creative ambition.
What struck me most was the way Alex Hyde writes longing — not as something dramatic or openly confessed, but as a force that quietly reshapes a person from the inside. Rabble’s narration carries a constant sense of displacement, as though she is forever circling a life she wants proximity to but can never fully inhabit. The emotional restraint of the novel makes its sharper moments land with even greater force.
The fragmented narrative structure works particularly well here. Memory, desire, and artistic identity bleed into one another until it becomes difficult to separate genuine connection from performance. The novel repeatedly asks who gets authorship, who gets recognition, and what it means to become invisible inside someone else’s mythology.
I also appreciated the novel’s refusal to romanticize the art world. Beneath the gallery openings, fame, and carefully cultivated aesthetic rebellion is something much harsher: exploitation disguised as collaboration, intimacy treated as material, and people consumed in the process of becoming culturally valuable. Hyde captures the unsettling relationship between authenticity and celebrity with remarkable precision.
The prose itself feels appropriately raw and observational, often reading like a series of photographs left slightly overexposed. Even in its quieter moments, there is a persistent emotional tension underneath the surface.
Readers drawn to psychologically layered literary fiction, artistic obsession, morally ambiguous relationships, and stories that interrogate performance and identity will likely find much to admire here.
This is ultimately a novel about what happens when admiration becomes a form of disappearance.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The most striking thing about ‘Exhibition’ by Alex Hyde is the voice. The use of the second person gives the book a certain intensity, making for a compelling read. That said, it also makes it a more challenging read, as it often isn’t clear what exactly is going on.
The voice works well. It suits what the book is trying to express—the idea of a person’s life framed and captured by someone else, the questions of curation and ownership. However, it does require more work on the part of the reader, and it may take several rereads to get.
Were I to return to the book, able now to see how it all fits together, my appreciation for it would probably increase, but based on my initial experience, it’s a three-star read for me. It’s different, and the writing is excellent, but it doesn’t go any deeper than that. It doesn’t leave me thinking, and I’m not sure I could summarise the plot (is there any, really?).
Overall, I found ‘Exhibition’ to be an enjoyable reading experience. It is best suited to readers who are interested in form more than story, and it is perfect for those looking for a quick, pacy read. It is not one for those who dislike a lack of speech marks and loathe ambiguity.
Many thanks to NetGalley, Alex Hyde, and Granta Publications for the ARC.
⚠️ Child abuse, drug use, addiction, overdose
The voice works well. It suits what the book is trying to express—the idea of a person’s life framed and captured by someone else, the questions of curation and ownership. However, it does require more work on the part of the reader, and it may take several rereads to get.
Were I to return to the book, able now to see how it all fits together, my appreciation for it would probably increase, but based on my initial experience, it’s a three-star read for me. It’s different, and the writing is excellent, but it doesn’t go any deeper than that. It doesn’t leave me thinking, and I’m not sure I could summarise the plot (is there any, really?).
Overall, I found ‘Exhibition’ to be an enjoyable reading experience. It is best suited to readers who are interested in form more than story, and it is perfect for those looking for a quick, pacy read. It is not one for those who dislike a lack of speech marks and loathe ambiguity.
Many thanks to NetGalley, Alex Hyde, and Granta Publications for the ARC.
⚠️ Child abuse, drug use, addiction, overdose
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Alex Hyde's second novel, following her debut and the Desmond Elliott Prize longlisted Violets. Rabble Stone is an artist, loosely based on and drawing inspiration from Young British Artists such as Tracey Emin. Rabble"s story is written from her perspective as she addresses a now deceased artist and former friend, who is unnamed in the text.
Exhibition is a character study then - of Rabble and her world - but also through Rabble's prism, that of her friend. The novel covers decades of their lives, and the second-person narration keeps both the novel at a distance and yet also intimately close.
I did enjoy reading this and found myself engaging with Rabble and interested in hearing the story she had to tell. I do feel that this a novel which fully deserves a second reading to gain a full appreciation of it's depths.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
Exhibition is a character study then - of Rabble and her world - but also through Rabble's prism, that of her friend. The novel covers decades of their lives, and the second-person narration keeps both the novel at a distance and yet also intimately close.
I did enjoy reading this and found myself engaging with Rabble and interested in hearing the story she had to tell. I do feel that this a novel which fully deserves a second reading to gain a full appreciation of it's depths.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Advance reader copy provided by Netgalley and Granta Publications
Who took the picture
At an auction the photographer watches her own images sell as a dead woman's self-portraits. Alex Hyde's Exhibition is narrated by that photographer, Rabble Stone, as an address to the dead artist she calls only you. The artist has the name and the price. Rabble has the eye. The novel asks which of those is authorship.
https://www.notesonbooks.net/exhibition/
Who took the picture
At an auction the photographer watches her own images sell as a dead woman's self-portraits. Alex Hyde's Exhibition is narrated by that photographer, Rabble Stone, as an address to the dead artist she calls only you. The artist has the name and the price. Rabble has the eye. The novel asks which of those is authorship.
https://www.notesonbooks.net/exhibition/
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Weird girl lit-fic lovers, this book is for you.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
i don't know how else to describe this book other than incredibly raw. if you're looking for something plot heavy then this won't be for you, but i was utterly captivated.
June 28, 2026
sapphic yearning on a new level. i love the arts and i love women. the writing style of this was really fun. she’s the beginning and the end
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is a darkly compelling read that leaves many unanswered questions. An insightful exploration of the art world, how success is made and for whom.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
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July 14, 2026for review
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