It’s notable (or perhaps it isn’t) that with this and Rose Ruane’s This is Yesterday, we’ve now seen a couple of novels that are at least tangentially involved with the venality of the British art world. Both Ruane’s Peach and Cunnell’s Terry Godden have been exploited (admittedly in different ways) by the art world and both novels have some fascinating things to say about the role of art in society and, in particular, how those from a working class background are only given limited and highly conditional access to this world.

Cunnell’s novel is a lot more visceral and direct in its anger than Ruane’s and at points reminded me a little of Hubert Selby Jr in its levels of compassion and moral certitude. It also disconcerted me initially because for some reason I was expecting a gentler, more indulgent, read and in many ways The Painter’s Friend is a brilliant dismantling of the (largely middle class) trope of the artist in retreat to ‘find’ or ‘recentre’ themselves. This is not a luxury that Terry, nor any of his companions, are ever likely to be afforded.

The inhabitants of the island to which Terry retreats after being cheated by art dealer Evelyn Crow are society’s outsiders, the forgotten, the rejected. Their lives are hard and they are precarious and there is little that is romantic or sentimental about them. And yet, they have formed a diffident community of sorts, held together not only by their common need for survival but of the role of various forms of creativity and art in their lives.

At its heart, this is a novel about the destructive forces of gentrification and yet it is often an oddly beautiful and even poetic one. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of Fiona Mozley’s Elmet and possesses the same sense of elemental wonder at the natural world and humanity’s place in it, especially when compared to the morally impoverishing demands of late capitalism. It might perhaps be too early (or too idealistic) to hope that both novels represent a new sense of communal anger and resistance in a UK literary scene that’s been too long dominated by a solipsistic sense of individuality and narcissism.

But like Elmet, the novel contains an inexorable sense of dread in the unfolding of its narrative. From fairly early on, it’s clear that there is going to be no happy ending for Terry and his friends and Cunnell seems to share Mozley’s sense of bleak nihilism. Nevertheless, this is a vital and haunting read and one that can’t come too highly recommended.