Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read Tiepolo Blue in exchange for an honest review. The story is like watching a car crash, at many points throughout the book I was holding my head in my hands thinking "poor Don." Don is a professor at the prestigious Cambridge University. He has been there since he was a student and it is really all he has ever known. It does make you question intelligence in all its forms. Academia is not the same as being socially smart; and boy does Don lack the social skills to deal with life outside the university. I am 5 years older than Don, but I had to continually remind myself 'he's younger than me'. The academic life has worn him down and robbed him of his personality. He continually allows himself to be manipulated by his best friend and circumstance. It is such an interesting read and I don't want to stay too much for fear of giving away any spoilers; but I will say this, its a compelling read (like watching reality Tv - you want to turn away but can't.)
I have always been intimidated by folks who went to University and this book has made me realise how much it inhibits and quells creativity, how you are taught just one person's opinion and that opinion could have been formed many years ago from that one book they got published. I always imagined a university should be a hive of creativity and forward (out of the box) thinkers. Am I glad I read this book? Yes

“Tiepolo Blue” depicts the life of Don Lamb, a former History of Art professor at Cambridge, who moves to London to be the director of an Art Gallery following an ill-conceived comment on a contemporary art piece erected on Peterhouse’s lawns.

We follow Don, as he attempts to negotiate ‘normal life’ away from the confines of the academic echo chamber, working at Brockwell Art Gallery, bumbling from one drunken mistake to another, documenting Don’s life slowly falling away from him.

As it does, I the reader I began to feel sad for him, as his ally and former mentor Val Black isn't what he seems, and Don comes to realise nothing and no one is.

The book was undeniably enjoyable, with well fleshed out characters, the story flows well and although slow in places it picks up speed In the final third.

Thank you Netgalley, and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In ‘Tiepolo Blue’ by James Cahill, I found myself reading under a looming sense of some impending catastrophe that I felt was going to pounce upon me suddenly, mostly due to hype about the book and the tantalising blurb. But then I realised I'd reached 50% and the narrative was still quietly, pleasantly, unobtrusively descriptive:
‘The sun had broken through the clouds, rinsing the garden in glassy brightness.’

This is a character study with more than a touch of Reginald Perrin and Prufrock about it, with a dash of Eleanor Rigby, and a smidgen of John Cleese. I was reminded of the devastating wit and sensitive observational style of ‘Gaudy Night’ by Dorothy L. Sayers, as our protagonist Don Lamb, bumbles through his life in Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge.

The purest example of Cahill's writing style can be lifted from what I would call the climax of the plot – well, perhaps not ‘climax’, as that can better be applied to a later scene – but upon the night when our love-interest Ben initiates Don into the contemporary art scene of the ‘90s and Soho nightlife, having revealed the titular artwork he has compiled from culling Don's academic art-historian source materials:

‘They set out at four o’clock and walk down to Herne Hill, passing the Rosses’ house on Craxton Road, then treading the border of Brockwell Park, on towards Denmark Hill. In the heat, people fill the streets. On a mound of grass at the foot of a tower block, two girls in crop-tops are bending over with laughter. They are in their early teens. One of them sits down on the grass and rolls onto her side. Her hair falls in a curl across an eye. The other eye meets Don’s as he and Ben pass.’

This is the ‘stuff’ of the novel: the reader assumes the role of spectator, adopting Don's idiosyncratic passive place in the narrative. He is voyeur in his own life; what happens to him is viewed at one remove. Don figuratively watches his life on a cinema screen, as objects manoeuvre themselves in front of him as static or moving images: the sculptures of Venus in the Brockwell Collection as they smash to the floor; the grotesque drunk who performs, jester-like, in front of Don on a bus; Val Black's white satin suit and the red wine stain with which Don sullies it; the gas cylinder in Val's ‘House Beautiful’ that Don interprets as a Minoan pot; and, of course, skies.

“Look ahead – the converging pavements, the cylindrical building at the junction. You could build a frame around the scene and it would resemble a painting of the Italian Renaissance, structurally at least: you could draw lines over the surface of the image, mapping the recession of space.” [Don] tilts his head back and squints.’

‘When he walks onto the poolside, his towel slung over one shoulder, he sees a large rectangular island of water. The heads of early-morning swimmers bob above the turquoise surface. […] The pool sides are crowded with people. Two girls sprint past him and jump, one then the other, sending geysers leaping into the air. Through his half-closed eyes, air and water become the same substance – pure blue, the same blue as in Tiepolo’s frescoes, only stronger, as if the skies of the paintings have concentrated into a brilliant essence.’

What Don views is often new to him, but simultaneously in a state of degeneration or decomposition. This loops the entire plot round to the SICK BED artwork installed on the lawn at Peterhouse, which symbolises Don’s disentanglement from academia, in fact – his own unravelling, these found/looked-at objects are often signifiers of Don’s impending demise:

‘Afterwards, they come to a straggling parade of shops. Teenagers hang around the entrances. Plastic boxes stacked outside a greengrocer’s release the sweet-acrid scent of fruit and veg. The next shopfront consists of a glass sarcophagus arrayed with raw meat – cross-sectioned, minced, cubed, patterned with creamy fat and skewered with star-shaped pieces of green card that announce prices and weights in scribbled pen. The colours of objects, their small details, enter Don’s vision like new phenomena – things he’s never seen.’

‘Ripping at the foliage, he sees that the creepers conceal other objects – old tins, scaffolding poles, tyres stacked in a cylinder, glass bottles caked in grime. Woodlice scurry as he dislodges an empty litre bottle of Courvoisier. He continues to tear at the greenery. Buried in a mound of ivy is what looks like a car engine, a compression of blackened tubes and valves, and next to it, a heap of old clothes – leather jackets, jeans and a fur coat piled up like geological seams. The fabrics have been reduced almost to compost but are still identifiable – just – as what they once were.’

At the close of the book, objectification is rounded off nicely: found objects melding with Art History, significant figures in Don’s life (Valentine Black, Erica Jay, Mariam Schwarz), and the unknowable (unviewable?) truths underlying his reality.

The same theory can be applied to the ‘locked-out lover’ motif that punctuates the novel. Don is repeatedly refused entry:

‘He tries to open the door to Ina’s annex. It is locked. He leans his head on the frosted glass, but the choppy surface discloses nothing. In a kitchen drawer, he finds a key with a tag marked ‘Back door’. This defunct route to the garden is behind the sofa in the television room adjacent to the kitchen. He goes through and heaves the leather chesterfield out of the way. The upper half of the door is glazed, but the view outside is blocked by a bush.’

Even characters who meaningfully shape his existence, such as Paul, exclude him from their sphere, just as he is progressively pushed out of his own domain of art historian:

‘Don peers through the glass. It is some kind of garden store. Paul’s shed. The interior is orderly and spare, like an armoury. Pairs of black wellington boots – clean, gleaming – stand in a row, rising in height to thigh-high waders. One pair is slimmer and sleeker than the rest, more like jodhpurs. Bamboo canes, hooked at one end, lie sideways on a shelf. Against the back wall, sacks of peat are stacked in the shape of a couch and topped by a blanket. Above, hanging from hooks, are a coil of yellow hosepipe, a clawlike rake, and a complicated harness – all leather straps and shining buckles. His eyes wander over the small details.’

Don’s repulsion from the lives of those whom he objectifies is best illustrated with his incursion into Goldsmith’s College – a realm he should dominate, but is instead brutally expelled from:

‘Unseen, Don looks around the circle of students. Their faces are so different from those he lectured in Cambridge. […] Without meaning to, Don has opened the door yet wider. They turn – all of them – to look at him.
“Can I help you?” says the older man.
Don scans the faces that are turned in unison towards him […]. “I’m an art historian,” he says. “A professor.’
“Whoever you are, you are interrupting my class. Please go.”
The man places a hand on Don’s arm and edges him back through the door.
“Get out of here, dickhead!” the girl shouts […].
The door slams and Don is alone in the corridor. […] He tries the door handle again, rattling the aluminium lever and pushing with all his weight, but it has been locked from the inside.’

And if Don is the disconnected observer of his own life, locked-out, repulsed, even banished; Val is the Machiavellian player moving the pieces round the chessboard in Don's flaccid self-reportage:

‘Don has played his role, but Val has been observing and orchestrating.’

Don’s life is performed in front of him, behind a veil, the players having been cast and directed by Valentine.

The painting, Poussin’s ‘Triumph of David’, which comes back to Don’s lifeless, sagging directorship at the Brockwell Collection from the museum conservator’s vigorous cleaning, damaged by the stringent chemicals, reads like a meta-self-conscious comment from Cahill:

‘[Don] gazes at the remains of the painting. He is struck, most of all, by the shimmering loveliness of the scene in its dissolved state. It’s as if a fine gauze has descended over the picture. The figures in their flowing robes have turned to soft-edged impressions. Hard forms have become crops of weightless, powdery colour. And yet the colours themselves have survived – strengthened, even. The whole thing pulses with blue, orange and umber. Goliath’s head is an ochre silhouette, as featureless as a face seen against a light-filled window. […] He thinks of his own artifice of his own role [at the Brockwell], in this place, and asks who – or what – will shake him free. Involuntarily, ne stretches out his hand and touches the tip of each of the boy’s fingers. The veneer of the painting wobbles at his touch. It feels smooth, dry and unexpectedly warm.’

Don is reaching out to touch his own existence, trying to make substantial contact with his life, shape some actuality, but the response is ‘wobbly’; insubstantial, precarious. This novel reads as a momentary glimpse into The Life of Don Lamb – just like David Nobbs’s Reginald Perrin – as his footing shifts and he outgrows the scope of closeted Professor of Art History. However, ‘life’ can only ever be applied in the loosest of terms. Don’s intellectual or emotional connection with the series of rolling scenes that serve as his existence remains as numb as is his response to the seminal black&white photograph he finds of his younger self in a punt with Val at Cambridge. Only with Ben does Don approach anything like active agency:

'His desire to gaze [at Ben] is also a desire to feel, hold, and possess.'

Ultimately, toward the end of the book, we read that Don has ‘seen enough pictures.’ The closure of the book is dazzling. ‘Tiepolo Blue’ reminded me of Sarah Winman's style - crisp and concise character studies – life looked at; the desire to be looked back upon.

My deep thanks go to Hodder & Stoughton for an advanced digital copy through Netgalley in exchange for review.

A good storyline about a professor of art history at Cambridge university. When a modern sculpture is installed he is appalled at the design and is derided for expressing his views. Excellently written.

This is an absolute masterpiece of a book that I'm not entirely sure I have the words to recommend enough.
Enthralling, captivating and magnificent, it tells of the downfall of Don Lamb - a stuffy, judgemental, yet painfully naive art historian at Peterhouse, Cambridge following the installation of a controversial sculpture in one of the quads. His fall from grace is marked with duplicitous friendships, sexual reckoning, hubris, and obsession -- all set against the backdrop of London's art world of the 1990s. Hopping from intense relationship to intense relationship amongst a cast filled with compellingly written and truly unlikeable characters, the book is imbued with a spiralling unravelling of tragedy and destruction. Simultaneously uncomfortable and a gripping tragicomedy, it is magnificent -- A Picture of Dorian Gray meets Forster meets Waugh, reinvented for the 21st century.

As someone just graduating from a degree in art history and beginning my forays into the world of art and academia in London, I found it particularly entertaining as I could recognise so much within the people, places and quarrelling relationships that Cahill captures. Truly fantastic.

Thank you to Hodder and NetGalley for the free e-book in exchange for my honest review :)

Don Lamb, in his early forties, is a professor of Art History. Having gone up to Cambridge as an undergraduate, he has remained there as an academic.
Having moved directly from a lonely life of only child of elderly parents to the sheltered life of academia, Lamb might be top of his field but is not at all worldly-wise.
His closest friend is Professor Valentine Black, formerly tutor and now his fellow academic.
The serenity of the cloister is shattered when a piece of modern art is erected in the quad and when Lamb expresses his disapprobation, his tenure becomes subject to doubt.
However, the more experienced Val offers a way out, providing his friend with support, both moral and in the form of a job offer as director of an Art Museum.
But as Lamb struggles with the transition from academia, and probably doesn’t even appreciate the need for it, his life spirals dramatically downward out of control.
While reading Tiepolo Blue, I had to constantly remind myself that Lamb is forty-three, not sixty three and that perhaps his stuffiness is attributable to the fact that the book is placed in the 1990s, rather than the present day. And even aware as he was of his thus far unexercised sexual preferences, it seemed odd that Lamb chose to employ his very basic computer skills in his own office in the way he did.
But while Lamb’s snobbery was insufferable, the cruelty of Valentine Black towards him was what made this a very uncomfortable read. By the time Lamb has begun to question his friend’s motives, it is too late.
On the plus side, this dip into the world of art history and learning about Tiepolo’s paintings was a very enjoyable experience.

I almost gave up on this book about a quarter of the way through. But I a so glad that I didn’t! It took me a while to really get into but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Although don was a remarkably pompous and unlikeable character to begin with, you grow to both love and respect him as he flounders through life with gross naivety.

I don’t know or particularly care about art, however this book read like a piece of artwork in itself, and I couldn’t have wanted more than the beautiful tragic ending we were given.

I would struggle to be able to review this book due to issues with the file/download. The issues stopped the flow of the book. The issues are:
- Missing words in the middle of sentences
- Stop/start sentences on different lines
- No clear definition of chapters.

Not sure if it was a file/download issue but there were lots of gaps, stop/starts which really ruined the flow. I would love the chance to read a better version as the description of the book appeals to me.

I cannot think why I chose Tiepolo Blue from a selection mailshot from NetGalley unless it was because I completely misread the book's description. However, I found the writing style immediately transfixing so I read on. A very interesting story indeed about an older man, Valentine Black and his protégé Don Lamb, set initially in the academic environment of Peterhouse Cambridge. Others will no doubt write a far more eloquent précis than me so what I wanted to concentrate on was the controlling influence of Valentine Black.
Val as he is commonly known to Don is a master puppeteer in the naive world of Professor Don Lamb and I wonder if he plays the role of a jilted or unrequited lover? Either way, after a couple of decades of close friendship which didn't lead anywhere, I believe Val planted enough seeds in Don's head, to lead to the latter's fall from grace at Peterhouse, with Lamb clutching at the proferred parachute of Director at the Brockwell in London. It was a way to ease Don out of Peterhouse so that Val would be in pole position when the position of Master came up. Val was very clever at giving enough rope and sure enough the present Master fell from grace too. So, everything in his planning was going fine until Don befriended a homeless artist and gave him lodgings at the home Val offered Don for his use at Dulwich.
A lot of the subject matter in this book is not my cup of tea but I thought for literary merit and complexity of story I will have to give it a five star review.

Don is a rather pompous, middle-aged professor at Peterhouse College, Cambridge who holds traditionalist views and is determined to hold fast to them in the face of a new modern art installation arriving in the quadrangle. His outspoken views appeared to be mirrored by his old professor and mentor, Valentine Black but all is not as it seems. Encouraged to sound off via a radio interview, Don finds himself edged out of Cambridge and entering a new phase of his life as director of a small art gallery/museum whilst continuing his efforts to write a landmark work on an artist, Tiepolo, known for his blue skies. All the while he is subtly manipulated by those around him. Although I found it easy to predict where this was leading very early on in the novel I continued to enjoy following the progress on Don's downfall. The description of a part of London that I know incredibly well, all be it as it was 3 decades ago, added to my enjoyment. I couldn't help wondering whether the title was purposely chosen to mirror Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and there were moments when I could detect echoes of this, particularly in the earlier chapters, but this soon faded as the story took on a life of its own. This is a very serious novel and not one to provoke much mirth. The story of Don's first repressed then awakened sexuality, set at a time when homosexuality was still largely reviled and hidden and the public were generally unaware of the spread of AIDS is cleverly told. As the novel reached its inevitable conclusion, my heart bled for Don a victim of his own naivety and pomposity. An enthralling novel and one of the best I have read this year.

Don is a professor at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He is an art historian and educated me beautifully on the artist Tiepolo and his wonderful blue skies! Don, however, is horrified when an artistic piece is exhibited on the lawns of the college, The Sick Bed! His mentor and colleague Valentine is in control though, not just of the college but of Don himself! Under Val’s direction Don becomes a rather lost soul. Brilliantly written, though I was disheartened towards the end of the story which became a little sordid with perhaps some unnecessary detail.
However, I thoroughly enjoyed my art education and will be on the look out for that Tiepolo blue!

Tiepolo Blue cleverly skewers the worlds of academia and visual art and all their attendant sneering snobbery. And the writing is exquisite. It charts the ‘emancipation’ (Don doesn’t see it this way!) of Professor Donald Lamb as he leaves the hallowed sanctuary of Cambridge after thirty years and navigates John Major’s London in 1992. I had just finished university at the time the novel is set and the attitude to homosexuality, particularly for older people was sadly spot on,.

The main issue I had with this book is that despite all of the above, I’m not sure it was for me. And that really shouldn’t detract from its appeal. As I said, the writing is exquisite. I just didn’t really invest in the characters, not even Don until at least half way through. (My deficiency, not the author’s.) I’ve given it 4 stars because it’s clearly well written and researched. But my heart wasn’t in it.

So read it if you love beautiful prose and are not looking for anything plot driven.

A rich and stimulating read.
Much respected in the rarefied atmosphere of Porterhouse College, Cambridge, art historian, Prof Don Lamb in his forties, leads a charmed life. Free to indulge his specialisation, he is writing the definitive study of the skies of the Venetian artist Tiepolo. Never short of academic stimulation and company, and a confirmed bachelor, he pleases himself. Quirky, a snob and judgementally sailing through his privileged life, there is nothing much to endear him to the reader. Until the appearance of a contemporary art installation on the lawns of Peterhouse offend him deeply and he becomes utterly lost.
By the end, he is a tragic, heartbreaking figure. Skilfully handled, Cahill takes us into both the public and private worlds of Prof Lamb. No longer automatically accepted and indulged, but mocked and disgraced as he makes one drunken, drug-fuelled blunder after another. His behaviour becomes increasingly self-destructive and he begins to realise some painful truths; and his tragic fall is complete.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #Hodder&Stoughton, for my free download in return for an honest review.

A great debut! Thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would recommend it.
Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I've been waiting a few days to decide what I made of this book and I'm still not sure! I'm not sure I've ever read a book so quickly yet so unsure of whether I was actually enjoying it or not.

The main character of the book, Professor Don Lamb', is an academic whose life is lived entirely in the narrow sphere of his Cambridge college and his work on the paintings (or tiny details from the paintings) of Tiepolo. He has sublimated everything else in his life into this work, so you know something is going to break down. The novel charts his slow unravelling over the course of a hot summer.

It's an oddly unsettling read - you know something bad is going to happen, it's just a question of when. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, yet you can't quite stop reading. I still can't figure out if I actually liked it or not.

JAMES CAHILL – TIEPOLO BLUE *****

I read this novel in advance of publication through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Don Lamb is a middle-aged professor at Cambridge, an art historian at Peterhouse. Cycling back from reading letters from the eighteenth century ‘he knows what the term will bring, his life isn’t chequered by surprises or excitements.’

Except it is. Right in the middle of the front court is something odd. A pile of rubbish scattered across the lawn, like a skip has been emptied. But it hasn’t. This apparent sprawl of rubbish is an art installation. One that sets his professional and private life on a dizzying downward spiral, reminiscent of Aschenbach in Death in Venice.

This must be one of the best written books I have read, for its metaphors and similes. Despite its leisurely pace, I kept turning the pages, the characters are so real, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. Don becomes part of your extended family; you want to help him, warn him, but he can’t hear you.

This is an unbelievably impressive novel. Can’t wait to see what he does next.

This novel explores different worlds in the 1990s, though at times it feels more like the 1950s in terms of behaviour and attitudes. There is the world of Cambridge dons - where boys move from public school to university to working and living in the college, almost monastic in the closed spaces where petty squabbles assume massive proportions and a closeted innocence exists alongside worldly scholarship. Professor Don Lamb inhabits this world and he is as arrogant and opinionated as you might expect, but also rather vulnerable and unused to the ways of the world.

There is the rather snobbish world of art history where Don Lamb comes adrift after giving a highly critical review of a piece of modern sculpture, and then the world of repressed homosexuality and what happens when Don moves to London and encounters a bewilderingly different and freer world. Initially a rather unsympathetic character I grew to realise how his life had ill equipped him to operate outside the Cambridge bubble and how difficult it is for him to come to terms with his sexuality.

I more admired the book than enjoyed it, but it is a good depiction of these particular lives and worlds.

This novel is slow in getting started, although it does provide the background setting to the story. A Cambridge art historian has been too honest and foreceful in his views of a recently installed modernistic sculpture named Sick Bed at Peterhouse, lead to his resignation of a life closeted in academia to London as a director of a museum. Don Lamb struggles with his sexuality during the course of this book, until he eventually submits to his emotions and desires. I found Don’s character confusing. Although he is in his early 40s, the impression I got was of a much older man, having lived a sheltered existence, somewhat naive, and very outspoken to his own detriment and downfall. He’s a loner, wandering aimlessly through life, taking advantage of the hospitality of a benefactor who has engineered his life’s direction. His ultimate downfall is derived from his curiosity to explore deeper into the realms of homosexuality. This novel paints an unsettling and rare opportunity to see the world through a different perspective.

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

In this beguiling debut novel, we meet Professor Don Lamb, a highly respected art historian, opinionated, hardworking and at the pinnacle of his career. He works and lives in his quarters at Peterhouse University of Cambridge. He is required to lecture on his subject, but he also has time on his hands to complete his next work of art, a tome about the Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and more specifically, the blue skies of Tiepolo’s masterpieces.
At Peterhouse, Don is cosseted amongst the fellows. He is respected and as a new term begins in 1994 he returns to Peterhouse on his bike. He passes through the Porters Lodge and is surprised to see on the hallowed lawns, what looks like a load of old junk that has been dumped from a skip, beneath the wreck is a flashing light. He soon learns that it is a piece of Modern Art entitled ‘Sick Bed’ and it is there to stay. He is incandescent with anger and greatly offended. He has no time for the monstrosity. Little does he know that his opinions will be his downfall. He will leave Peterhouse in disgrace. Even his revered friend Valentine Black, once his mentor when Don was an undergraduate, will not be able to save him.
He is due to start a new job in a London gallery called The Brockwell Collection, a job recommended by Val. Don is given the run of Val’s house in Dulwich, called ‘The House Beautiful’, and comes complete with a housekeeper called Ina. Val even drives Don down in his Mercedes and gives him a grand tour. At last it is time to go to work. Don is given an enthusiastic welcome by the Chief Curator and it is there that Don meets a young artist called Ben. His safe and sterile lifestyle in Cambridge is long gone. Ben introduces Don to his friends, his own contemporary art and Soho. Don is out of his comfort zone. His lifestyle is now a total reversal from genteel Cambridge. Ben moves into ‘The House Beautiful’ in an unused upstairs bedroom and so begins a hedonistic period for Don. He is shocked, he is excited, his behaviour is chaotic and with no experience of modern life and love, he flails. This is his story, one of friendships, misinformation, recklessness and downward spirals.
I received a copy of this poignant and engaging novel through my membership of NetGalley and from publisher Sceptre, sent to me in return for an honest review. I thought the novel was unique and addictive, but the pace of the story unequal. I felt no sympathy for Don at first. He was tactless and arrogant, unable to hold back his opinion and compromise. However as the story continued I felt he was somewhat used and abused. I felt empathy for him as he suffered a massive mid-life crisis that he was ill equipped for. I mainly felt ambivalent about the other characters. On the whole they were self-seeking and unkind. I thought the story was eloquently told, the storyboard filled with intrigue, innuendo and surprises. I definitely enjoyed reading this novel although I have no artistic bones in my body. I further researched Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, my interest piqued by Don’s fixation on his masterful work. I loved his paintings as well. This novel is a ‘Book of 2020’ pick.

I liked how this book had a very specific sense of time and place. The artworld scene on 1990s Cambridge and London is vividly rendered, and the petty internal squabbles, jealousies and scandals are well rendered. It's the story of Don Lamb, an art professor at Cambridge, and a deeply repressed gay man who has devoted his life to academia and art. His life slowly starts to blow up when a radical Tracey Emin-style art installation is approved at Cambridge. Don's visceral - and very public - reaction to the artwork sees him move to London to work in a gallery, where Don meets a young man, Ben, who starts to open Don's eyes to other, more troubling and difficult truths about the world - and himself.
Author Cahill immerses us in Don's world - and his POV - which is at once a fascinating view onto the world of the novel but also a source of some frustration. Personally I would have liked to see Don be slightly more dynamic in his exploration of his sexuality and how he has ignored the more intimate side of life for so long. More human insight than insight into artistic works, basically.
However I believe this book will find an audience who will appreciate its unusual story and very well-rendered scene from an era that sometimes feels like it could be 80 years ago, not 30.