At the heart of this moving and unusual novel is a strange painting by a woman who committed suicide rather than live with neglect and pain.
Her final work was The Jewel: glowingly beautiful, painted on linen, and created as a shroud, to accompany her in death.
Today her painting hangs in a Dublin gallery, where it draws together the lives of three people: an artist turned thief, coping with a tragic loss; an obsessive curator whose lonely life revolves around her work; and a specialist in major art thefts, trapped in an abusive relationship with another man.
