JAMES CAHILL

– Tiepolo Blue

This debut novel is immensely readable, even though the main character is a divisive figure. Professor Don Lamb is a conservative and traditional art historian who is finding his certainties and his place in 1990s academia eroding away as times change around him.

His world is upended when he takes exception to a new art installation at Peterhouse College, Cambridge (inspired by Tracey Emin’s famous My Bed) and makes the mistake of resoundingly disparaging it as an artwork on a radio talk show. He finds himself in disgrace, but his colleague, best friend and mentor Valentine Black manages to orchestrate a career transition to a prestigious London art gallery (not dissimilar to the Dulwich Picture Gallery).

It is there that Don becomes entangled with Ben, a handsome young artist, who awakens the desires he has studiously buried for decades. As the novel progresses Don becomes increasingly unreliable as the book’s narrator – he is often inebriated, hungover or unravelling mentally. The reader finds themselves wincing at his decisions and behaviour as he lurches (often in an intoxicated state) from one disaster to the next. Gradually he erodes away the favour of his old boy network, friends and allies, while a pervasive sense of unease and ambiguity hovers over the narrative.

What exactly is Valentine up to with his machinations and obfuscations? What does Ben want from Don and where has he vanished to? By the end of the novel some of the questions have been answered, others are left more ambiguous. – Graeme