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A stylish, ambitious novel—touching on themes of power, money, and desire—that evokes the art world and all of its moral complexities.
Thomas Haller has achieved the kind of fame that most artists only dream of: shows in London and New York, paintings sold for a fortune. The vision he presents to the world is one of an untouchable genius at the top of his game. It is also a lie.
Between his ruthless new dealer and a property mogul obsessed with his work, the appetite for Thomas and his art is all-consuming. Who is the real Thomas Haller? His oldest friend and former dealer, Lorna, might once have known—before Thomas traded their early intimacy for international fame.
On the eve of his latest show, the luminaries of the art world gather. But the sudden death of a young man has put everyone on edge—and so begins a chain of events that will lead a group of friends back into the past to confront who they have become.
A story of deception, power-play, and longing, The Violet Hour exposes the unsettling underbelly of the art world, asking, who is granted admission to a world that seems to glitter and shimmer, and who is left outside, their faces pressed to the glass?
"Still, Cahill writes beautifully of Haller's work and creative process, as in the description of two abstract paintings that appear side by side as "an expanse of luminous pink, the brushstrokes destabilized in places by the action of a spray can and splashed solvents," which turn out to be fragments from film stills. This is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"There's something of F. Scott Fitzgerald about the way Cahill writes about the very rich. Cahill writes with an artist's attention to color and detail, but also with an acute awareness of surface glitter." ―The Daily Mail (UK)
"A biting satire of the art world's glamour, pomp, and greed. Offers a painfully accurate portrait of art dealers and collectors. It becomes clear that, in The Violet Hour, the art world is less a professional network than an arena in which psychosexual dramas might play out. Lucid and evocative." ―The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Cahill allows us a private view of the art world in all its rancid glamor. The artist Thomas Haller—like Wilde's Dorian Gray—has sold his soul. As painters, gallerists and collectors move between New York and the Venice Biennale, auction houses and apartments hung with Mapplethorpes or Picassos, a reckoning is coming. Pulsing with violence and longing, this is a sumptuous, sinister morality tale." ―Clare Pollard, author of Delphi
"I stayed up way past my bedtime reading The Violet Hour and it's brilliant. I'm really in awe of the prose, which is so elegant ... and the human drama of it is just pitch perfect. I'm so glad to have read it. Hypnotic." ―Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide
This information about The Violet Hour was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Cahill has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and his writing has been published in Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Daily Telegraph. James divides his time between London and Los Angeles.
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