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James Cahill

Tiepolo Blue: 'The smart, sexy read you need in 2022’ Evening Standard Hardcover – 9 Jun. 2022

by James Cahill (Author)

105 ratings

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'The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read... There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.' STEPHEN FRY

'The smart, sexy read you need in 2022.' EVENING STANDARD

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love.

When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship - and his own unexamined past - are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don's life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces.

'A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling...wildly enjoyable' FINANCIAL TIMES

'Tiepolo Blue really has blown me away... The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library.' ROBERT DOUGLAS-FAIRHURST

'Meticulous and atmospheric... delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge' Michael Donkor, GUARDIAN

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Sceptre
Publication date

9 Jun. 2022
Dimensions

14.4 x 3.6 x 22.2 cm
ISBN-10

1529369398
ISBN-13

978-1529369397
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Product description

Review

This divine debut from art critic and academic James Cahill is the smart, sexy read you need in 2022. Expect to see it on prize lists as well as Instagram feeds. The novel's protagonist is Professor Don Lamb, a precocious but prematurely stuffy art historian and Cambridge don, who likes measuring the skies in the paintings of Venetian master Tiepolo. Lamb takes preternatural offence when a Tracey Emin-esque bed sculpture is installed outside his college lodgings, and departs to London in a sulk for a new museum gig. There awaits a new kind of awakening - and it's not just because the YBAs are taking off. Not only an addictive pageturner, Cahill's book taps into the tensions and suspicions between generations that feels incredibly relevant for our testy times. ― Evening Standard

Bringing together the Italian masters and the Young British Artists, this is a debut that looks at art, power, academia, and the potential of the urban setting at the end of the 20th century. ― Dazed.com

The story of Tiepolo Blue and its people have invaded my dreams...something in the way Cahill puts the reader in Don Lamb's shoes does (or has done in my case) extraordinary things. I blushed and howled warnings and wanted to slap, cajole, hug, disown, disavow and walk away from him. His life will look so squalid and pathetic from the outside, but Cahill takes us inside and we somehow respect and love him. This is the best novel I have read for ages. It is so beautifully written, not a false note in any sentence. Cahill's presentation of the agonising clash of aesthetics, of culture, of generations... it's just masterly. Don's disintegration is painful to read, but it all grips you like a thriller. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read... There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in. -- Stephen Fry

The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill. The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence - except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously -- Edmund White

This is a novel full of suspense and surprise. It made me laugh and brought back memories of a time in my own life. I missed the characters as soon as I'd finished. -- Sarah Lucas

I travelled on the exquisite vessel of James Cahill's prose, unable to disembark. The journey is sensual, treacherous and elegiac. The final landing, breath-taking. -- Maggi Hambling

Wow. It is magnificent. Simply magnificent...Tiepolo Blue really has blown me away: the gorgeous phrase-making; the sure-footed pacing; the (re-)immersion in a world I know, or knew, in a way that is both hard-edged with historical detail and almost hallucinatory...The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library. -- Robert Douglas - Fairhurst

Imagine if Hollinghurst and Murdoch collaborated on a witty update of Death in Venice and you'll see the appeal of James Cahill's assured debut. -- Patrick Gale

James Cahill's first novel, drawn from close observation, tells a gripping tale of the worlds of traditional academia and art history pitted against those of contemporary art, each failing horribly to understand the other. As a result all becomes infused with satirical comedy and ghastly tragedy. -- Norman Rosenthal ― Curator of the ‘Sensation’ exhibition in 1997; former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy

An absorbing coming-of-age story. ― The Art Newspaper

The standout [recent novel about art] is James Cahill's Tiepolo Blue...Interrogating beauty and meaning in art, Tiepolo Blue rewards rereading. Pointing to masked, tricksy identities, clues glitter gem-like amid hallucinatory prose...a stylish tale of love and long-game revenge. ― Royal Academy Magazine

The worlds of art, academia and queerness collide in James Cahill's debut book. ― i-D

[An] arresting debut novel... a masterly attention to (especially visual) detail and in an irresistibly propulsive, almost swaggering style... Cahill is by no means a polemical author, and the novel is all the better for it. Any authorial commentary is barely detectable above the crowd of vivid characters with which Cahill has populated his novel, for Tiepolo Blue is, at its heart, an astute character study. ― Literary Review

Evocative and accurate... meticulous and atmospheric... delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge... an electric new novel written by an author skilled in the evocation of vertiginous, heightened emotion' ― Michael Donkor, Guardian

One of the standout debut novels is James Cahill's Tiepolo Blue, a coming-of-age tale set in London in the 1990s that deftly explores what it is like to suffer a very public fall from grace ― Independent

What starts off as a campus novel soon shades into something weirder and much more mesmerizing... The plot is propulsive, though the crafted ambience of unease simultaneously destabilizes the reader at every turn. The prose is fluid and precise but the tone equivocal, bathos merging into pathos, tragedy into farce and back again... It's a measure of Cahill's sleight of hand that he manages to inject his plot with such page-turning momentum. -- Lucasta Miller ― TLS

Art, academia and abject self-denial combine in this startlingly impressive, 1990s-set debut...A heavily perfumed, sexually tender, psychologically acute novel... as full of light and colour as Tiepolo's incandescent skies. ― Daily Mail

[A] simmering debut novel ― Esquire.com

With touches of Alan Hollinghurst, the musings of the book's protagonist on the radical power of art to act as a catalyst for personal change make it an exhilarating, erudite read. ― Vogue.com

A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling...wildly enjoyable...The combination of arty milieu and sexual stirrings may evoke Alan Hollinghurst, but Iris Murdoch is a more obvious point of comparison...Snobbish and incompetent, Don may be difficult to like, but his painful awakening is delicately rendered. ― Financial Times

I love the punctured idealism, contained savagery and ever-lurking farce of campus novels, and there are some delicious new additions to the genre - perfect antidotes for the cold. James Cahill's Tiepolo Blue tells the tale of a fusty ferociously fusty art historian whose academic career is upended by a ferociously unbeautiful sculpture. ― TLS

[An] old-fashioned ambitious novel about the wonders of art and the depths of the human heart, full of people and ideas ― The Times

Book Description

An exquisite debut novel. A mid-life coming-of-age story charting one man's sexual awakening and his spectacular fall from grace in 1990s London, raising questions about art and beauty, sex and censure. For fans of Allan Hollinghurst and Edward St Aubyn.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sceptre (9 Jun. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1529369398
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529369397
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.4 x 3.6 x 22.2 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 6,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 28 in Painting (Books)
- 55 in Parodies (Books)
- 89 in Gay Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
105 ratings

About the author

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James Cahill

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James Cahill has worked in the art world and academia for fifteen years, combining writing with a role at a leading contemporary gallery. He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King's College London. His writing has been published in the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Burlington Magazine.

Customer reviews

5 star		52%
4 star		25%
3 star		13%
2 star		5%
1 star		4%

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Clive Lafferty

Read in 2 sittings.....very impressive debut.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2022

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University Campus, Art History, Queer, a delayed coming of age with psychological complexity - what's not to love. At times I felt like I was reading an Iris Murdoch novel with eccentric characterisation combined with an Alan Hollinghurst plot raising questions about identity, psychology and mental health, beauty and truth, against a mid 90s backdrop.....I loved the experience of reading what felt like a period piece of writing, that I remember! And living in south east London in 1998, it was an accurate and warming nostalgic throw back for me. So much so that after completing the book, I took myself down to Dulwich Picture Gallery and followed it with a glass of Beaujolais in the local pub (2 relevant locations in the novel).
(I'm not sure the Beaujolais would have been up to Val's standards, but Don would have drunk it anyway, so I followed Don's example)

I couldn't put it down and I'm really exiting for Mr Cahill's next offer.

6 people found this helpful

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James Novak

Masterly; the reviews are justified. A stunning debut. So well-written the pages flew by.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2022

Verified Purchase

I’ve just reached the final page. James Cahill is a magician - how did he do it? I felt such keen empathy for Don; when Don was rejected I felt the rejection acutely. When Don humiliated himself I felt the humiliation in the pit of my stomach. Left with so many questions - about Val, about Ben, about Michael. Was that really Paul in the darkness? I loved the intrigue; the playfulness and the heartfelt lack of Don’s real life-long dalliances with sex and love. This one is going on my shelf next to my favourite Colm Toibin The Story of the Night. I’m a slow reader but read this in two days. I wanted redemption for Don - but perhaps that freedom and his sexual wake up was redemption enough. I am astounded at James’s assured and masterly debut. He writes so well the pages slip by.

4 people found this helpful

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Vanessa Heron

A stylish thoughtful novel full of art and life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 July 2022

Verified Purchase

Everything about this book made me want to read it from the stylish blue cover (yes, I am that trivial) to the promise of art history and a recognisable South London Art Gallery, I do love a London novel. The idea of traditional art pitted against installation art and modern sculpture in a Cambridge College could have had farcical shades of Porterhouse Blue (there were faint echoes) but was handled with wonderful dialogue, unexpected plotting and scenes to make the reader squirm in a very satisfying way.
I loved this book. It swept me through it and I was left totally believing it and wanting to read it again. The Soho after dark adventures of Don had shades of Dorian Gray’s sins for me and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a Dorian figure had loomed out of the darkness in the CALYPSO club. Indeed, did he? Read it and find out.

3 people found this helpful

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Simon B.

Compelling intelligent and beautifully crafted

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2022

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This book for me was a wonderful surprise. It is an intelligent and a deeply human depiction of the main character’s struggle to make sense of his life, his work, his friends and the world as it constantly bumps and jars against him from the very first page. It is full of colour and light and ever-changing perspective which had me often turning back to reread passages with new insight. It is funny and tragic, ridiculous and wistful in turn. It is an erudite work but one where the erudition is psychologically revealing and interwoven integrally with the development of the characters and storyline. I thoroughly enjoyed Tiepolo Blue and would recommend it.

3 people found this helpful

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Kambosian

Extraordinary...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2022

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This beautifully paced novel recounts the enlightening, and simultaneous downfall, of Don Lamb. The narrative is gripping and beset with unsettling tensions - an academic dedicated to detailed analysis of Tiepolo's frescos but struggling to achieve any level of honest self-reflection; a Cambridge college with an identity being eroded in real time by shifting cultural perspectives; friendships struggling to stay within plutonic tramlines. Cahill's deft touch is extraordinary as he rehearses with pinpoint accuracy the dischordant and destructive thoughts we suffer as our fortunes unravel.

Its a book that doesn't leave you until long after you have finished. Haunting. Superb.

3 people found this helpful

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Aoife // Littlebookelf92

Beautifully written!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 August 2022

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‘𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘬𝘺, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.’

🌑🌑🌑🌑🌓 (4.5/5)

Hate to love characters? YES.
Dark Academia vibes? MY GOODNESS YES!
Questionable motives? UNDENIABLY!

Oh how this book stole my heart. Not only is it so beautifully written that it makes me want to write, it makes me want to wander around an art gallery and appreciate each piece for everything it is.

I love that it is shown throughout the book that art is not something we just observe, but rather that we feel.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating an entire spread in my journal and writing thoughts as the story developed.

2 people found this helpful

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David

A long downward spiral to lights out.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2022

Verified Purchase

Beautifully written and compelling story of a protagonist who isn’t particularly likeable but pitiable. I found myself hoping in vain for an upturn in his fortunes. Difficult to say much else without spoilers. Suffice to say I saw a supporting character’s game early on.

2 people found this helpful

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Sophie Muir

A beguiling and exquisite read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 June 2022

Verified Purchase

Tiepolo Blue – as beautiful as the art it discusses in a nuanced and thematical way. Despite initial trepidation when beginning this book due to its somewhat slow and extensive exposition, I felt fully rewarded by the last pages. Cahill has created something that feels more akin to the experience of contemplating an intricate painting opposed to reading a novel. There are so many themes explored within this book i.e queerness, academia, truth, love, etc. all of them handled in such a way which feels honest and full of humility. I cannot stop thinking about and recommending this book to everyone. Such a beguiling, exquisite read.

2 people found this helpful

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