Well this was an interesting book. sad in many place s and depressing too but very insightful and full of surprises.

I like books set in academic settings and this was one of those reads. That poor professor though! He faced so much and it was a very personal story he went on. Iloved the fact youlearn a lot about the art world too. Infact this was a good novel to get into and really understand people I may nnot have before.

A good read. Lots to think about.

At Cambridge University in 1994, Professor Don Lamb is working as an art historian and writing a book about the Venetian master Tiepolo and the blue skies in his paintings. His life has kept him from forming relationships, and when a singular event topples his world, he finds himself in new places with different people and with realisations and feelings emerging.

Drama, tension and an intense sense of foreboding greets us from the outset of this novel which intensifies as we follow Don down an unexpected route in life. He stumbles into an existence which disturbs and intrigues him as his imagination begins to tangle with reality. Detachment, exclusion and obsession ultimately lead to revelations and tragedy. The multiple settings almost seem to form a character in their own right; mocking, isolating and stifling Don, and creating real and imagined barriers where he becomes an intruder in his own life. There are twists in the tail end which I didn’t see coming and the threads tie up for a satisfying conclusion.

This is a compelling and incredibly immersive debut novel, I look forward to what James Cahill writes next. Many thanks @netgalley and @sceptrebooks for the opportunity to read and review Tiepolo Blue.

I really enjoyed aspects of this novel but found the main characters a little hard to sympathise with. Although I feel that was the intended response I still found myself hoping for a slightly more redemptive ending! The story has stayed with me after finishing it though, which is always a good sign, and I love the title and the associated imagery woven through the book.

A beautifully written story of the life of Don Lamb. Having been pushed out of Portherhouse at Cambridge university for standing up for his views about a new piece of art and having lived there since his graduation days, it is a culture shock to find himself living in London. This follows his story with the present day also revealing some of his past. It is a bitter sweet tale about sexuality, finding oneself and how other peoples manipulation can have such a negative effect on life. Some wonderful characters and written in such a style that you just want to keep turning the pages. Highly recommended.

A beautifully descriptive novel about a art historian on a journey of self discovery and his too late coming of age. A stimulating and brightly coloured novel filled to the brim with tragedy and comedy with intrinsically beautiful writing that just kept giving. James Cahill is a talented and liberating writer who offers cinematic prose and a delicate understanding of thought. Although I thought the plot sometimes lacked it was the beauty of the writing and the characters that kept me reading.

Our protagonists, Don, is a Cambridge academic and art historian who finds himself embarking on an unexpected but life fulfilling journey when he takes up a new job in a London Art Gallery. As his worldview begins to decompose around him and his understanding of both himself and the art world comes into question we are exposed to the barebones of both our protagonist and 1990’s London.

This book was unlike anything I’d read before but simultaneously very similar to some of the most prominent gay novels from the 80s and 90s. Although I was let down by some of the predictable twist and turns in the plot - I still highly recommend this novel to anybody who is a fan of Alan Hollinghurst or Andrew Holleran.

Thank you to Sceptre for an ARC of this lovely novel.

What an amazing book!
The book is super exciting and would love to read more from the author!

Thankyou netgalley for the ARC

Don Lamb is a history of art professor living a very closeted life with little experience of life outside of academia. When he is suddenly thrust into ‘real life’ by unexpected events he flounders, although he also goes on a voyage is discovery about himself. The book is well written but I couldn’t really sympathise with the character of Don.

The completely unexpected course of events kept me turning the pages.

Ejected from his safe yet stultifying academic life, the central character, Don, is an art historian who seems, like the stereotype of his scholarly kind, to be as stunningly naive about life as he is is brilliant in his subject area.

It could be that his faithfulness to his studies at an age when he should have been experiencing sexual awakening has largely been the cause of this naivety. Later on, when we meet him, he is going out into the world to crash into a sort of mid-life-latent-adolescent crisis that he nevertheless embraces with poise, shored up by his understanding of classical art and its history.

His departure from academia was not entirely by choice but at the times when it seems that someone is pulling the strings that guide him through his new life, there is doubt caused by some event or other. Maybe things aren't orchestrated, it could just be other peoples' ignorance or folly that sets up some of the situations Don finds himself in. The sympathetic descriptions of the people he meets in his new role as a gallery director in London seem always to redeem them. They are as unworldly, in their ways, as Don was himself when he was cocooned by the traditions he has left behind.

There is a seamy and sordid side to Don's new life in the wide world, with descriptions that could have been crudely handled. No spoiler here, but hats off to the author for the way he deftly plumbed the depths of his character's latent sexuality without making me cringe.

The uncertainties are satisfyingly cleared up in the closing pages and, along the way, I revelled in the emotional journey and at the same time was introduced to some powerful themes around art.

An absolute masterpiece. Sumptuous descriptive writing and lovingly crafted work. I cannot think of a book I have enjoyed more.

Tiepolo Blue tells the story of a naive, old-before-his-years Cambridge professor, Don Lamb, whose passion is the Italian artist, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Having lived and worked in a Cambridge college since he was a student Don is unaware of life outside academia and when he suddenly loses his job he gradually loses sight of reality.

Set during the early 1990s this is a beautifully written book about a closet gay. Don is manipulated all the while by Val, his best friend and ex-tutor who finds him a new job as Director of a prestigious small art gallery in Dulwich. Val insists that Don lives in his magnificent house a walk away from the Gallery and Brockwell Park and Lido,

Not only does Don take to drink but he leads the gallery into disrepute and an assistant director is installed by Val (as a member of the governing body) to keep Don in check. This incenses Don but numerous attempts to reach Val to complain are ignored. As a reader I was hoping that Don would somehow redeem himself but once he indulges in his passion for Ben, a young artist, you know all will not end well.

This is a character-driven novel but so much happens as Don stumbles through one self-imposed crisis to another that no further plot is needed. The descriptions are excellent and the atmosphere is as dark as one expects. I was surprised that Aids wasn't mentioned, except obliquely, as it was certainly rife among gay men at that time. Also, the abruptness of the ending was a disappointment for me.

The style of writing and subject matter will no doubt bring comparisons with Alan Hollinghurst, but I feel that Tiepolo Blue, is much darker and more graphic in detail. It deserves to win prizes. Many thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a beautifully written book, but not an uplifting read.
Don is a young, gifted academic at Cambridge. Then things start to change.
He is a closet homosexual, perhaps not entirely sure that he is. Val is a senior academic at the College. He persuades Don to move from the college to run a museum in south east London.

We don't know why Val is trying to control Don's life; all we do know is that his influence is not as benign as it first appears.

Some fantastic descriptions, but I felt there were some holes in the storyline and slightly unbelievable coincidences.

As a treatise on the unravelling of a man sheltered by academia for much of his life, this book could not be bettered. Don Lamb is a professor of art history in a Cambridge college until he forcefully expresses his opinions of a work of modern art installed on the lawn of the college. This leads to his removal and the taking up of a post as director of a gallery in London. Don’s life has been so sheltered up to that point that he cannot help but trust the wrong people, and to begin an exploration of the darker sides of his own character, which inevitably leads to disaster for him. The book is very beautifully written and any lover of renaissance art will be enthralled by its literary treatment here. The characterisations are perhaps a little less convincing, including that of Don’s mentor and friend whose motives in helping him are not as generous as they seem. Well worth reading.

I can’t help feeling I’m missing a lot of the undercurrents and nuances in this book. To me, a university professor is drifting through is life having progressed from school to university to teaching at said establishment without experiencing any life outside of academia. So it’s no surprise that when he is forced outside of his comfortable world his life starts to unravel.
At times I had sympathy for Don Lamb but his inaction makes him complicit as real life and interactions are “done to him”.
As for the ending – not very imaginative.

This novel, set in the 1990s, is about a Cambridge academic, art historian and defender of all things Classical Professor Don Lamb, who experiences a set of events which force him to leave his cloistered scholarly life and embark on a new existence in London. Through the machinations of fellow university don and mentor Valentine Black, he swiftly becomes director of Brockwell Museum and takes residence in Dulwich, a London suburb almost as unreal and static as Cambridge. However, thanks to his new-found freedom, he soon encounters a world his former life had screened him from and starts to question his previously blinkered views on art, the world and his relationships. I cannot recommend this novel enough. It is brilliantly written, sometimes funny, constantly thought-provoking and really quite gripping. It’s not often I get to read such a good novel.

Didn't really get into its groove. Deeply unlikeable main character. No real conclusion in journey or what he went through to rushed ending

I was profoundly disappointed with this book.
Initially a campus novel but an exceedingly ponderous one, it then embarks on a long and tedious fall from grace for the main character - Don - a middle aged, sexually repressed, highbrow art historian
I could never engage with or care about Don - who comes across, quite frankly, as a rather annoying and pompous twerp.
The events in his post-campus life felt far fetched and forced and all of the characters in the book seemed false to varying degrees.
It was a real slog to finish this book.

My thanks to Hodder Books for the pre-publication copy in return for honest feedback.

We first encounter art history professor Don Lamb safely tucked away in the Cambridge college that has been his home since his arrival as a teenager. He is affronted by a modern art installation in one of the quads; while wondering what he makes of it, he is aware that others will be watching his reaction. And from here starts a series of events that changes his life irrevocably.
Don is a grown man who seems never to have had to take responsibility for everyday things. At times he is so startlingly naïve I felt like shaking him. Is he in denial or simply failing to recognise what is going on around him? I was pleased to see him break out of his (self)-proscribed life but desperately sad there was nobody enough on his side to give him advice. Indeed the one person who would profess to watch out for him fails to act or withholds information that might have prevented Don from tripping again and again.
It’s difficult not to think about Alan Hollingsworth’s work when reading this and I think it bears the comparison well, capturing the feel of the time and place. It’s a love letter to London, parts I know and others I now want to get to know. James Cahill shows us an art history world that puts itself on a pedestal while at the same time poking fun, depicting some of its denizens as pompous or ridiculous. Tiepolo Blue is a compelling portrait of an unworldly man opening his eyes and seeing what life can be.

Really enjoyed the Cambridge setting and politics in this read, being immersed in the world of art and academia, and the personal secrets the main characters have.

This felt a bit of a curate's egg to me, both in terms of style, pacing and story.
At times it reminded me of a Somerset Maugham tale in its' plain description of the subject class and attitudes, which made me wonder if the reference to the author in it was some sort of Moon and Sixpence homage. At other times, and particularly towards the end when the slow, almost lazy downward events speed up to an almost hallucinogenic level, it felt like a narrative dump. Whether this was intended as a reflection on the protagonists' selfish, shuttered view finally being stripped away to what is really happening around him, or a symptom of his 'awakening', I'm still not really sure.
I thought the concept was an interesting one, and the author's expertise in the art world comes through strongly - to the point of feeling almost like a set of art critiques. The writing of time and place was, for me, mixed in its success. The academia side of things worked well, the exposure to London and its varied facets less so. At times it felt more 1950s than 1990s - perhaps this was intended, as the protagonist himself felt at times more like an old man than the forty something he is (and yes, this 'old-before-his-time aspect is addressed early in the novel).
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book for the most part but without wanting to give away any spoilers, I felt the ending was disappointing in both execution and, for me, what felt like an over reliance of tropes.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this book was well written and enjoyed the twist in the ale at the end.

The plot follows the nominative-deterministic Don through his downward spiral, a modern-say Rake’s Progress, with his friend, Val, acting as dues ex machina throughout. Don ambles through the plot largely in the same manner as he analyses the Tiepolo paintings - not looking at the people but instead staring into the distance around them. I found it hard to identify with Don, but shared some of blind spots.

As someone who recognised Cambridge and London at the time of this novel, was interesting to be reminded, although Peterhouse seemed an unusual place to put Sick Bed.