The biography of a celebrated but ultimately tragic painter; a lauded but self-critical and self-destructive man. This is why no one much remembers Nat Tate, not since his suicidal leap from a New York ferry in 1960. That and the fact that immediately before his death he gathered together as many canvasses as he could and put a match to his legacy. This is why only three examples (good examples; these are good paintings, believe me) are reproduced in this monograph. We are not able to form an honest opinion of Tate’s art because, for us, for now, the artist didn’t allow it. Instead the book brims over with monochrome photographs of Tate and his circle.

So what is the point? Boyd is resurrecting an artist whose work no longer exists in a meaningful sense. And his story, while it touches tangentially on serious European and US art in the mid-Twentieth Century, is only slightly more rooted in fact. It’s a sketch, a beautifully penned glimpse of greatness. Was Tate great? Probably. Is Boyd’s work a fitting tribute to that perceived greatness?

Or:

This book is a fake. It’s not an obvious fake. If anything it’s an intricate, crafted, loving fake. Its author has admitted as much. It was launched with great hoopla in New York, with the great and the good and David Bowie gathering to memorialise Nat Tate. Some even remembered.

But the clues are all here: the photographs are too often portraits of the artist as a young man out of focus or in the distance. The biographical details are sketchy, too riddled with doubt. And that celebrated pyre...that just smacks of being too damn convenient. (One over the eight, William.) The paintings that are reproduced, though, are, whatever Boyd’s protests, easy on the eye. And, methinks, he doth know it.

See, to read Nat Tate, knowing what we know, necessarily makes us hunt obsessively for those clues, to nod knowingly that, ‘yes, I knew all along.’ And we probably did. People like Nat Tate wouldn’t have stayed submerged for long. But, more damagingly, it destroys the book, right?

Wrong. Instead of Nat Tate: Art Scam, Boyd’s book is magically reinvented as Nat Tate: Novella - the first (knowing) fictional work of art publishers 21. And as such it not only makes more sense, it makes for a better book. Boyd has always been a masterly short story writer and lacklustre novelist. Nat Tate is, therefore, exactly what he does best, only lavishly illustrated, beautifully produced, and a hell of a lot better than his recent Armadillo. Chances are, once the dust settles, it will be seen as one of his best books, period.