The Violet Hour
- Author James Cahill
- Narrator Andrew Wincott
- Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
- Publish Date 27 February 2025
- Run Time 12 hours and 46 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Art: financial aspects, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Paintings and painting.
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What to expect
'An enthrallingly intricate novel . . . impressive'
GUARDIAN
'There's something of F. Scott Fitzgerald about the way Cahill writes about the very rich'
DAILY MAIL
'A biting satire of the art world's glamour, pomp and greed . . . lucid and evocative'
DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A highbrow whodunnit, and grippingly so, but it's much more than that'
PATRICK GALE, author of Mother's Boy
'As sensuous and glimmering as it is dark and unsettling . . . a novel to get sucked into'
JENNY MUSTARD, author of Okay Days
'It's brilliant . . . the human drama of it is just pitch perfect . . . Hypnotic'
SEÁN HEWITT, author of All Down Darkness Wide
'Artists are slaves to their vanity. But in the end, in time, they see things as they really are.'
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.
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. Between his ruthless new dealer and a property mogul obsessed with his work, the appetite for Thomas and his art is all-consuming.
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 a chain of events begins that will lead Thomas and Lorna 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 only seems to glitter and who is left outside, their faces pressed to the glass?
GUARDIAN
'There's something of F. Scott Fitzgerald about the way Cahill writes about the very rich'
DAILY MAIL
'A biting satire of the art world's glamour, pomp and greed . . . lucid and evocative'
DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A highbrow whodunnit, and grippingly so, but it's much more than that'
PATRICK GALE, author of Mother's Boy
'As sensuous and glimmering as it is dark and unsettling . . . a novel to get sucked into'
JENNY MUSTARD, author of Okay Days
'It's brilliant . . . the human drama of it is just pitch perfect . . . Hypnotic'
SEÁN HEWITT, author of All Down Darkness Wide
'Artists are slaves to their vanity. But in the end, in time, they see things as they really are.'
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.
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. Between his ruthless new dealer and a property mogul obsessed with his work, the appetite for Thomas and his art is all-consuming.
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 a chain of events begins that will lead Thomas and Lorna 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 only seems to glitter and who is left outside, their faces pressed to the glass?
Critics Review
There's a thriller element that keeps you reading. This is a novel about art and its moral compromises, and The Violet Hour's tutelary spirit is that of Henry James . . . an enthrallingly intricate novel, with a large cast of characters whose stories and psychological hinterlands are successfully interlinked through the mesh of art, money and desire . . . impressive
There's something of F. Scott Fitzgerald about the way Cahill writes about the very rich . . . Cahill writes with an artist's attention to colour and detail, but also with an acute awareness of surface glitter
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
An intriguing look at an industry built on appearances
The novel succeeds in showing how individuals erect barricades between each other and the ways in which memory and introspection can offer an escape from the present. The Violet Hour may be a novel about art, but even a self-avowed philistine will find much to chew on
It isn't exactly hard to satirize the art world, but it is always fun . . . Inevitably, what follows are displays of ego, extravagance, artifice, and avarice that might seem implausible to an art world outsider but, to insiders, signal business as usual. All this is set against such classic haunts as yet another gallery opening and, of course, the Venice Biennale
James Cahill gets better and better. I really loved The Violet Hour, trying, and failing, to ration myself rather than reading in a greedy rush. Its evocation of the wonders of art and the dehumanising horrors of the art industry are spot on, of course, but as a novelist what I really admired was his narrative structure and sly choreography of his principal characters. On one level it functions as a highbrow whodunnit, and grippingly so, but it's much more than that, building into a meditation on mortality and the unreliable consolations of art, love and materialism. I can't wait to see what he does next
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
The Violet Hour had the same effect on me as Tiepolo Blue did - again I'm overwhelmed by the beauty of James Cahill's writing and storytelling. There is such mastery over language and character here, in this disarmingly immersive tale of the infinite potency - and at times the sense of the vacuous futility - of art and the artist
As sensuous and glimmering as it is dark and unsettling, The Violet Hour depicts the art world's many troubling facets: glamour, money, jealousy, politics, moral corruption and betrayal. Written in Cahill's rich, melodic prose, it's a reflection on materialism, love, and the purpose of art, but more than anything, it is a pure delight to read. A novel to get sucked into
James Cahill has done it again. The Violet Hour is a thrilling story told in seductive, shimmering prose. Beauty, money, power, seduction, betrayal. It's all here in this bewitching and all too often troubling backstage pass to the commercial art world
I greatly enjoyed this compelling and beautifully written novel, set in the rarefied world of high-end art, exploring the complex ambiguity and contradictions of contemporary life and personal relationships. I found the author's eye and ear for the nuanced detail of today's art world ritual unusually acute and often unnervingly familiar
Cahill allows us a private view of the art world in all its rancid glamour. 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
A hugely enjoyable yarn by an author hitting his literary stride
The international contemporary art market is rich territory for a novelist, and James Cahill mines its excesses and absurdities with precision and panache
A tale told with thunder of an art world smitten with itself and peppered with characters who encapsulate the tremendous accomplishments, delusion and mysteries of art
A brilliant reimagining of T. S. Eliot's world of fragmentation and fleeting social encounters, here filtered through the madness of the modern art market . . . It's a novel of beautifully realised surfaces but also alluring (and sometimes alarming) depths, like a Rothko painting seen in vivid, vital glimpses
A riveting, immersive journey into the unsettling underbelly of the art world
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