Blank Canvas by Grace Murray

 

Blank Canvas by Grace Murray.

Published 15th January 2026 by Fig Tree.

From the cover of the book:

Introducing an outstanding new voice in literary fiction: a sensual, sharp, and utterly compelling campus novel about grief, reinvention, and the ripple effects of telling lies

If I ever woke up with an ungodly dread ― that I could change it all now, turn around, and confess ― I ignored it. I had never been good, and there was no point in trying now.

On a small liberal arts campus in upstate New York, Charlotte begins her final year with a lie. Her father died over the summer, she says. Heart attack. Very sudden.

Charlotte had never been close with her classmates but as she repeats her tale, their expressions soften into kindness. And so she learns there are things worth lying for: attention, affection, and, as she embarks on a relationship with fellow student Katarina, even love. All she needs to do is keep control of the threads that hold her lie – and her life – together.

But six thousand miles away, alone in the grey two-up-two-down Staffordshire terrace she grew up in, her father is very much alive, watching television and drinking beer. Charlotte has always kept difficult truths at arm’s length, but his resolve to visit his distant daughter might just be the one thing she can’t control.

***********

On a small liberal arts college campus in Pittsford, New York, Charlotte begins her final year with a lie, by telling fellow student Katarina her father had a heart attack and died over the summer -when he is, in fact, alive and well back home in Lichfield, England. 

Charlotte has never connected with her fellow students, but suddenly she is an object of kindness from those around her, and she starts to enjoy being noticed. But once the lies begin, it is impossible to stop - especially when she embarks on a relationship with Katarina that is founded on falsehoods.

Murray sucks you in this literary delight through the perspective of her unreliable narrator. Charlotte's voice grips you from the first page, completely immersing you in a novel that begins wreathed in acid wit, and then has you run a gamut of heart-rending emotions. 

In an effort to distance herself from the bleakness of her life in England, Charlotte has attempted to reinvent herself, without success - until a whopping lie brings her the contact she craves. Suddenly feeling seen, for the first time in her sad life, she quickly becomes addicted to the attention. Drawn into a relationship with her unwitting confidante, a young woman she has previously found ugly, she is seduced by Katarina's kindness and affection. Charlotte becomes overwhelmed by the feelings she has long supressed, and finds herself falling in love, but disaster awaits...

I found it impossible to look away as Murray gradually peels back the layers of Charlotte's dysfunction, revealing the unresolved traumas that have shaped her, and why she feels the need to fill the void inside with lies. She makes it her business to take a good long look at complicated family history, painful childhood experiences, guilt, shame, estrangement, loneliness, and yearning, freewheeling towards the inevitable moment when the consequences of Charlotte's actions play out - and then takes you beyond to a messy kind of healing. There is nothing vaguely comfortable about the experience, but, my goodness, the writing is a joy to behold.

And if that was not enough, this is also a seriously clever dig in the ribs to the absurdity of the world of art, especially the pretentious folly of the liberal arts college campus scene.

What an absolute cracker of a debut, with a wonderfully apposite title! Quietly devastating, it is like a gut punch to the emotions, with shades of Rebecca Wait's mix of pitch black humour and raw sentiment, and it held me fast, all the way to a perfectly contrived ending. I cannot wait to see how Grace Murray's career develops, because this is an impressive opening gambit.

Blank Canvas is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Fig Tree for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Grace Murray was born in 2003 and grew up in Norwich. She has recently graduated from Edinburgh University, where she read English Literature and found time to write between her studies and two part-time jobs. Her short fiction has been published in The London Magazine.

In writing Blank Canvas, Grace set out to explore themes of Catholic guilt and queer identity, clashing moral codes and lies, and the opportunity for reinvention presented by moving between countries and settings.

Blank Canvas was written over the course of a year as part of WriteNow, Penguin Random House’s flagship mentorship scheme for emerging talent. Grace Murray won one of nine places on the scheme on the exceptional strength of her writing, selected from a pool of over 1,300 applicants.