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The Violet Hour
A pitch-perfect, emotionally riveting debut novel about the fracturing of a marriage and a family – from an award-winning young writer with superb storytelling instincts.
Life hasn’t always been perfect for Abe and Cassandra Green, but an afternoon on the San Francisco Bay might be as good as it gets. Abe is a rheumatologist, piloting his coveted new boat. Cassandra is a sculptor, finally gaining modest attention for her art. Their beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, is heading to Harvard in the fall. Somehow, they’ve made things work. But then, out of nowhere, they plunge into a terrible fight. Cassandra has been unfaithful. In a fit of fury, Abe throws himself off the boat.
A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a modern family through past and present, from the funeral home in the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to the San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Greens navigate the passage of time—the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age, the headiness of desire, the bitterness of loss—they must come to terms with the fragility of their intimacy, the strange legacies they inherit from their parents, and the kind of people they want to be. Exquisitely written, The Violet Hour is the deeply moving story of a family suddenly ripped apart, but then just possibly reborn.
Life hasn’t always been perfect for Abe and Cassandra Green, but an afternoon on the San Francisco Bay might be as good as it gets. Abe is a rheumatologist, piloting his coveted new boat. Cassandra is a sculptor, finally gaining modest attention for her art. Their beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, is heading to Harvard in the fall. Somehow, they’ve made things work. But then, out of nowhere, they plunge into a terrible fight. Cassandra has been unfaithful. In a fit of fury, Abe throws himself off the boat.
A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a modern family through past and present, from the funeral home in the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to the San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Greens navigate the passage of time—the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age, the headiness of desire, the bitterness of loss—they must come to terms with the fragility of their intimacy, the strange legacies they inherit from their parents, and the kind of people they want to be. Exquisitely written, The Violet Hour is the deeply moving story of a family suddenly ripped apart, but then just possibly reborn.
354 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2013
23 people are currently reading
2418 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Hill
3 books38 followersKatherine Hill is the author of the novels The Violet Hour (Scribner 2013) and A Short Move, (Ig Publishing 2020).
With Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, and Jill Richards, she is also co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Columbia University Press 2020).
Her fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including AGNI, The Believer, Bookforum, Colorado Review, The Common, The Guardian, The Literary Review, n+1, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review Daily, Philadelphia Inquirer, Post45, Post Road, San Francisco Chronicle, and Tin House.
Katherine is an assistant professor of English at Adelphi University, where she teaches creative writing and literature to undergraduate and MFA students. Her writing has been awarded fellowships from the New York Public Library, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Born in Washington D.C., she now lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn.
With Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, and Jill Richards, she is also co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Columbia University Press 2020).
Her fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including AGNI, The Believer, Bookforum, Colorado Review, The Common, The Guardian, The Literary Review, n+1, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review Daily, Philadelphia Inquirer, Post45, Post Road, San Francisco Chronicle, and Tin House.
Katherine is an assistant professor of English at Adelphi University, where she teaches creative writing and literature to undergraduate and MFA students. Her writing has been awarded fellowships from the New York Public Library, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Born in Washington D.C., she now lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
October 8, 2014
Katherine Owen, an international best-selling author has quoted about infidelity as:
“There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for.”
Katherine Hill, an American author, who's debut book, The Violet Hour, focuses on the subject of infidelity and mid-life crisis in a couple's married life. Honestly, after reading the book, I felt like, OMG! What the hell! The synopsis says something, whereas the story speaks about something else. Reading the synopsis, it sounded like, it’s about the story of an adult man and woman, who after taking the road to divorce, how their life unfolds, instead, the whole book, takes us on a roller-coaster ride of every past events occurred in the lives of the primary characters, surrounding the funeral of the woman's father.
Thanks to the author's publicist at Simon and Schuster for sending over me a copy of this book.
Cassandra and Abe Green are married for a very long time and also they got married while they were very young. On a sailing trip over the San Francisco Bay, Cassandra confesses about her extra-marital affair to Abe, hearing which Abe jumps off their yacht in the middle of the bay away from his wife and blissful married life. Soon the story fast forwards to 8years in the future and focuses on Elizabeth, who is Cassandra and Abe's daughter who is a Harvard medical graduate and is in a relationship with a wanna-be actor, Kyle, who are visiting Elizabeth's grandfather's 80th birthday in Washington. But soon, her grandfather dies by falling off from a ladder and the whole focus of the book shifts to the funeral and this event changed the course of each and every one's life attending the funeral. Abe, a doctor, also gets close to his wife, with whom he was on no-talking terms, Elizabeth grows cold over her boyfriend, Kyle, Cassandra gets to know herself more better, who happen to be quite promiscuous woman, even when she was young.
Frankly speaking, there is nothing to like about the story, unfortunately, the synopsis is the only thing which sounded terribly intriguing, but after reading the book, I realized, the whole story is about these three characters, Elizabeth, Cassandra, Abe, and their life, their past, their habits, etc... I couldn’t even found solid and sound logic to Cassandra's fickle-minded decisions; I hated this Cassandra character, which woman think of having thousands of affairs after getting married!! Was it necessary to portray Elizabeth like her mother's character? I like her in the beginning, but when she fell for a 20-something young boy, I simply loathed her. Only Abe was someone, who I adored in the book. He was the perfect man, did everything to support his family's needs and demands, but still Cassandra managed to hurt Abe quite a number of times and every time, Abe forgave her infidelity. He was a sweet father and a perfect husband. The worst part of the book was, it was thoroughly very boring; there was so solidity or strong back-story to support the characters.
Now after reading this unbiased review, it's up to you to decide whether you want to read this book or not!
“There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for.”
Katherine Hill, an American author, who's debut book, The Violet Hour, focuses on the subject of infidelity and mid-life crisis in a couple's married life. Honestly, after reading the book, I felt like, OMG! What the hell! The synopsis says something, whereas the story speaks about something else. Reading the synopsis, it sounded like, it’s about the story of an adult man and woman, who after taking the road to divorce, how their life unfolds, instead, the whole book, takes us on a roller-coaster ride of every past events occurred in the lives of the primary characters, surrounding the funeral of the woman's father.
Thanks to the author's publicist at Simon and Schuster for sending over me a copy of this book.
Cassandra and Abe Green are married for a very long time and also they got married while they were very young. On a sailing trip over the San Francisco Bay, Cassandra confesses about her extra-marital affair to Abe, hearing which Abe jumps off their yacht in the middle of the bay away from his wife and blissful married life. Soon the story fast forwards to 8years in the future and focuses on Elizabeth, who is Cassandra and Abe's daughter who is a Harvard medical graduate and is in a relationship with a wanna-be actor, Kyle, who are visiting Elizabeth's grandfather's 80th birthday in Washington. But soon, her grandfather dies by falling off from a ladder and the whole focus of the book shifts to the funeral and this event changed the course of each and every one's life attending the funeral. Abe, a doctor, also gets close to his wife, with whom he was on no-talking terms, Elizabeth grows cold over her boyfriend, Kyle, Cassandra gets to know herself more better, who happen to be quite promiscuous woman, even when she was young.
Frankly speaking, there is nothing to like about the story, unfortunately, the synopsis is the only thing which sounded terribly intriguing, but after reading the book, I realized, the whole story is about these three characters, Elizabeth, Cassandra, Abe, and their life, their past, their habits, etc... I couldn’t even found solid and sound logic to Cassandra's fickle-minded decisions; I hated this Cassandra character, which woman think of having thousands of affairs after getting married!! Was it necessary to portray Elizabeth like her mother's character? I like her in the beginning, but when she fell for a 20-something young boy, I simply loathed her. Only Abe was someone, who I adored in the book. He was the perfect man, did everything to support his family's needs and demands, but still Cassandra managed to hurt Abe quite a number of times and every time, Abe forgave her infidelity. He was a sweet father and a perfect husband. The worst part of the book was, it was thoroughly very boring; there was so solidity or strong back-story to support the characters.
Now after reading this unbiased review, it's up to you to decide whether you want to read this book or not!
March 23, 2017
The Violet Hour is a debut novel about the fracturing of a marriage and a family. Abe and Cassandra Green have their ups and downs, but always manage to keep their marriage intact. Abe is a rheumatologist and Cassandra is an artist. Their beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, is heading to Harvard in the fall. One day after Abe has bought a sloop and they are out on the water, they plunge into a terrible fight over Cassandra's infidelity and Abe dives out of the boat and heads for shore. This love story starts at the end of a marriage and follows a family through past and present from the funeral home the family has owned for generations to the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Green family matures and the children start lives of their own, we note the passage of time, the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age and the working out of the relationship with members of the family. Cassandra is the main character and at the end, we see the possibility of reuniting with Abe. The Violet Hour is almost lyrical in its beauty of language. I enjoyed reading about all the ups and downs on one family.
July 20, 2013
Another dysfunctional family! I seem to be on a run of these family books for a while now. It does make me feel lucky to be part of a normal family, and that our problems are ordinary compared to those that these families deal with. Especially this one, considering I have no clue what motivates any of them to do what they do. They also commit the mistake of being boring as well as unlikeable, and sitting through 350 pages of this particular family was a pain.
Abe and Cassandra are the middle generation. They fight because Cassandra has an affair, Abe finds out and jumps off a boat. Cut to five years later and they're separated, and Cassandra's father dies. She has an irritating mother who no one likes and who maybe has an interesting story but that's brushed aside to recount Cassie's affairs with two men. Abe makes an appearance to the funeral, has random sex with a lady who clears out immediately after, and then he clears out as well. Cassandra's daughter Elizabeth is a doctor who's sold out on her ideals and wants to be a skin doctor (I should show this to my dermatologist aunt, she'd be spitting nails if she read the continual insinuation that her discipline was selling out and that skin problems are somehow lesser compared to other ailments. She helps a lot of people.) She has an artist boyfriend who hits her when she's down (after she's bitten him, but it's not his grandfather who died), and he clears out, so she has an affair with a stalker who gets his (boring) perspective until the sex and then he clears out of the book and her life as well. See the pattern? There are some random other characters, but they don't matter.
In fact, the main characters don't matter either. The only thing that happens with some consistency is the characters sleeping with random people, and then getting out of the book. What was the point? I didn't see any. The author introduces several lame issues to make her novel more relevant - I don't think I've ever seen Hurricane Katrina used to so self-indulgently before. The events of the book is set during the aftermath of Katrina, and characters resort to checking (or avoiding) news of the devastation whenever they run out of people to sleep with. They don't even guilt-trip properly. There's a random neighbor who is autistic (something else?), and he's trotted out a couple of times randomly as well. There's a gay brother, the only thing we know of him is that he's gay. He doesn't get two lines to say for himself in the book.
I think this was a disjointed mess. It has some interesting themes, but they're not arranged coherently or even relevantly. They're also framed by a completely unlikable and uninteresting family. The only reason the side characters look would be interesting is because there isn't any development to them. The developed characters show zero emotional growth. I've no idea what they learned, what they resolved, because at the end of the book they're in the exact same place they were at the start, minus one father who no one remembers enough to get out of their own miserable heads. 1 star.
I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.
Abe and Cassandra are the middle generation. They fight because Cassandra has an affair, Abe finds out and jumps off a boat. Cut to five years later and they're separated, and Cassandra's father dies. She has an irritating mother who no one likes and who maybe has an interesting story but that's brushed aside to recount Cassie's affairs with two men. Abe makes an appearance to the funeral, has random sex with a lady who clears out immediately after, and then he clears out as well. Cassandra's daughter Elizabeth is a doctor who's sold out on her ideals and wants to be a skin doctor (I should show this to my dermatologist aunt, she'd be spitting nails if she read the continual insinuation that her discipline was selling out and that skin problems are somehow lesser compared to other ailments. She helps a lot of people.) She has an artist boyfriend who hits her when she's down (after she's bitten him, but it's not his grandfather who died), and he clears out, so she has an affair with a stalker who gets his (boring) perspective until the sex and then he clears out of the book and her life as well. See the pattern? There are some random other characters, but they don't matter.
In fact, the main characters don't matter either. The only thing that happens with some consistency is the characters sleeping with random people, and then getting out of the book. What was the point? I didn't see any. The author introduces several lame issues to make her novel more relevant - I don't think I've ever seen Hurricane Katrina used to so self-indulgently before. The events of the book is set during the aftermath of Katrina, and characters resort to checking (or avoiding) news of the devastation whenever they run out of people to sleep with. They don't even guilt-trip properly. There's a random neighbor who is autistic (something else?), and he's trotted out a couple of times randomly as well. There's a gay brother, the only thing we know of him is that he's gay. He doesn't get two lines to say for himself in the book.
I think this was a disjointed mess. It has some interesting themes, but they're not arranged coherently or even relevantly. They're also framed by a completely unlikable and uninteresting family. The only reason the side characters look would be interesting is because there isn't any development to them. The developed characters show zero emotional growth. I've no idea what they learned, what they resolved, because at the end of the book they're in the exact same place they were at the start, minus one father who no one remembers enough to get out of their own miserable heads. 1 star.
I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.
August 6, 2013
Some novels are like Christmas gifts, bubble wrapped, placed in a box, embellished with patterned tissue paper, wrapped with thick paper and tied up with a tidy bow. They're self-contained units of entertainment with a beginning, middle and end, their presentation crafty, their parts intact, their ends tied up neatly. But some novels, like The Violet Hour, are more like snow globes. You never really know what's going on with those people and places inside the bubble — all you see is what happens when their world gets shaken up a bit.
Hill's debut novel is full of bold choices: She writes from the tricky omniscient third-person perspective, giving each of her protagonists equal weight in the judging reader's eye, letting them be who they are and nothing more. She adeptly steers clear of the Zooey Deschanel principle that fictional women should be doe-eyed and enchantingly imperfect. She lingers in the novel's places, making Bethesda and San Francisco and Manhattan characters unto themselves. Most importantly, she gives her novel's inhabitants full and flawed lives outside the pages. People are shaken, feelings are hurt, morals are questioned — but then the snow settles. What happens next is up to us to imagine.
Hill's debut novel is full of bold choices: She writes from the tricky omniscient third-person perspective, giving each of her protagonists equal weight in the judging reader's eye, letting them be who they are and nothing more. She adeptly steers clear of the Zooey Deschanel principle that fictional women should be doe-eyed and enchantingly imperfect. She lingers in the novel's places, making Bethesda and San Francisco and Manhattan characters unto themselves. Most importantly, she gives her novel's inhabitants full and flawed lives outside the pages. People are shaken, feelings are hurt, morals are questioned — but then the snow settles. What happens next is up to us to imagine.
July 5, 2013
Originally published on my blog: therelentlessreader.blogspot.com
The Violet Hour had a promising beginning. The first chapter was lovely and contained a great set-up. After that things went a little haywire for this reader.
I did enjoy the characters and some aspects of this story. Sadly, there were just too many things happening at once.
Funeral homes, sculpture, medicine, sailing, siblings, and adultery were all covered in this book. On their own, those are great topics worthy of a story. But, they were all smashed together resulting in a murky narrative that seemed directionless.
Even Hurricane Katrina made a number of appearances in this story, for no reason that I could see. The book is set in Maryland and no one in the book is affected by the hurricane. It didn't make sense for it to be brought up numerous times.
Perhaps the author was trying for a melting pot of hot button topics? It didn't work for me.
The Violet Hour had a promising beginning. The first chapter was lovely and contained a great set-up. After that things went a little haywire for this reader.
I did enjoy the characters and some aspects of this story. Sadly, there were just too many things happening at once.
Funeral homes, sculpture, medicine, sailing, siblings, and adultery were all covered in this book. On their own, those are great topics worthy of a story. But, they were all smashed together resulting in a murky narrative that seemed directionless.
Even Hurricane Katrina made a number of appearances in this story, for no reason that I could see. The book is set in Maryland and no one in the book is affected by the hurricane. It didn't make sense for it to be brought up numerous times.
Perhaps the author was trying for a melting pot of hot button topics? It didn't work for me.
Read
September 3, 2013I started this book yesterday and have no desire to go back and read anymore. My favorite character and the only one I thought that had any redeeming qualities has already died so I have even less of a desire to get back to it. Not every book needs to be super fast paced but this one is so slow. Not my cup of tea. Gave up on it.
Received it from NetGalley
Received it from NetGalley
July 28, 2014
Beautifully written but strangely forgettable. Family members descend on Howard Fabricant’s Bethesda, Maryland funeral home for his 80th birthday party in late August 2005 – but the festivities take on a very different hue when Howard falls from the roof of the sauna he’s building and dies instantly. In an ironic twist, the undertaker becomes, as it were, the undertaken. Considering the chaos brought about by Hurricane Katrina at the same time, though, this one family’s losses fall into proper perspective.
The main characters here are Howie’s middle-aged daughter Cassandra, a sculptor who has traveled from San Francisco; her ex-husband, Abe Green, a pot-smoking doctor who left her eight years ago on account of her serial adultery; and their daughter Elizabeth, a 26-year-old dermatology student in New York City – “preparing to devote herself to the surfaces of life,” a category that seems to encompass her actor boyfriend, Kyle. The funeral marks the first time all three Greens have been in the same room since the divorce.
Not content to stay within the confines of the funeral week, the narrative keeps flitting back, often without any warning (such as a section break or an indication of the year), to revisit how Abe and Cassandra met, and why everything went wrong between them. Along with Hurricane Katrina, the novel’s other obsession is the climactic scene onboard Abe’s sailing boat when the Greens knew their marriage was over. These are like two metaphorical poles Hill keeps returning to: when things fell apart for this family, and when things fell apart for part of the nation eight years later.
I say ‘strangely forgettable’ because I often wondered whether this was anything more than a random assemblage of characters and events, with nothing to link them. Hill’s prose is lovely (e.g. “They tilted over green Virginia countryside scattered with blocky shopping centers, gray cul-de-sacs and highway cloverleafs, and thousands of roving, insectile cars trundling along to their hives”) and her characters well drawn, but the storyline just isn’t strong enough to pull it together.
Here are some elements I did enjoy:
• the suburban DC setting (as in Emily Gould’s Friendship, it’s fun to spot familiar places I grew up near); “All roads in Maryland lead to Catholic schools” made me chuckle
• the descriptions of the undertaking profession, especially in the last scene of preparing a body for burial, but also in Hill’s figurative language: “She’d felt like an empty suitcase, as though when he’d left, he’d packed up all her insides, all the viscera and emotions that made her feel like herself, and taken them with him in a cardboard box.”
• Toby Steinberg is a fun character; I don’t know that he really belongs in this novel (he’s just some guy Elizabeth met at a wedding in NYC who happens to live in Montgomery County, Maryland and sees her grandfather’s obituary), but he was possibly more vivid than many of the more central characters, especially thanks to this great line: “What a peculiar person he was: a papardelle noodle with unsuspected strength.”
But there are lots of things that feel like they don’t belong in the same novel: art, medicine, sex, substance abuse, death, divorce, the hurricane, sailing, and so on. Oh, I don’t know. All together, those could make a novel. I have a suspicion, though, that I won’t remember much, if anything, about The Violet Hour next week. That seemingly meaningless title (a quote from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland) doesn’t help. Many have compared Hill’s work to Jonathan Franzen, a comparison I don’t really see; if anything, I’d say this book is like Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements (but less fun).
Hill is a talented young writer (born 1982), but needs a better story to work with next time around.
The main characters here are Howie’s middle-aged daughter Cassandra, a sculptor who has traveled from San Francisco; her ex-husband, Abe Green, a pot-smoking doctor who left her eight years ago on account of her serial adultery; and their daughter Elizabeth, a 26-year-old dermatology student in New York City – “preparing to devote herself to the surfaces of life,” a category that seems to encompass her actor boyfriend, Kyle. The funeral marks the first time all three Greens have been in the same room since the divorce.
Not content to stay within the confines of the funeral week, the narrative keeps flitting back, often without any warning (such as a section break or an indication of the year), to revisit how Abe and Cassandra met, and why everything went wrong between them. Along with Hurricane Katrina, the novel’s other obsession is the climactic scene onboard Abe’s sailing boat when the Greens knew their marriage was over. These are like two metaphorical poles Hill keeps returning to: when things fell apart for this family, and when things fell apart for part of the nation eight years later.
I say ‘strangely forgettable’ because I often wondered whether this was anything more than a random assemblage of characters and events, with nothing to link them. Hill’s prose is lovely (e.g. “They tilted over green Virginia countryside scattered with blocky shopping centers, gray cul-de-sacs and highway cloverleafs, and thousands of roving, insectile cars trundling along to their hives”) and her characters well drawn, but the storyline just isn’t strong enough to pull it together.
Here are some elements I did enjoy:
• the suburban DC setting (as in Emily Gould’s Friendship, it’s fun to spot familiar places I grew up near); “All roads in Maryland lead to Catholic schools” made me chuckle
• the descriptions of the undertaking profession, especially in the last scene of preparing a body for burial, but also in Hill’s figurative language: “She’d felt like an empty suitcase, as though when he’d left, he’d packed up all her insides, all the viscera and emotions that made her feel like herself, and taken them with him in a cardboard box.”
• Toby Steinberg is a fun character; I don’t know that he really belongs in this novel (he’s just some guy Elizabeth met at a wedding in NYC who happens to live in Montgomery County, Maryland and sees her grandfather’s obituary), but he was possibly more vivid than many of the more central characters, especially thanks to this great line: “What a peculiar person he was: a papardelle noodle with unsuspected strength.”
But there are lots of things that feel like they don’t belong in the same novel: art, medicine, sex, substance abuse, death, divorce, the hurricane, sailing, and so on. Oh, I don’t know. All together, those could make a novel. I have a suspicion, though, that I won’t remember much, if anything, about The Violet Hour next week. That seemingly meaningless title (a quote from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland) doesn’t help. Many have compared Hill’s work to Jonathan Franzen, a comparison I don’t really see; if anything, I’d say this book is like Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements (but less fun).
Hill is a talented young writer (born 1982), but needs a better story to work with next time around.
July 19, 2013
The Violet Hour has a very interesting beginning. Abe and Cassandra, a married couple, are sailing off the coast of California for the day. Their college-bound daughter, Elizabeth, is with them. Abe finds out that Cassandra is having an affair and a huge tumultuous fight ensues. Abe jumps off the boat and swims to shore. They divorce shortly afterwards.
Fast forward several years. Abe and Elizabeth have not spoken since the divorce and Elizabeth is in her last year of medical school. Cassandra's family have all gathered to celebrate her father's 80th birthday. He is building himself a sauna but unfortunately he falls from the high beam and breaks his neck the day before his birthday. Now it has turned into a funeral. Cassandra's sister, Mary, calls Abe to let him know about the death and Abe shows up at the funeral. It is awkward for everyone but they manage to make things work.
This story takes place primarily during the time of Hurricane Katrina and it is about families and their dynamics. It has a lingering plot line that at times meanders and does not appear to be going anywhere specific. I had to make myself continue reading the book at times but, ultimately, it was rewarding. The characterizations are adequate but I did not have the feeling that I knew what really made anyone tick deep inside. The narrative is interesting and flows smoothly and the author has a nice way of presenting conversations. All in all, I think this is an author to watch in the future.
Fast forward several years. Abe and Elizabeth have not spoken since the divorce and Elizabeth is in her last year of medical school. Cassandra's family have all gathered to celebrate her father's 80th birthday. He is building himself a sauna but unfortunately he falls from the high beam and breaks his neck the day before his birthday. Now it has turned into a funeral. Cassandra's sister, Mary, calls Abe to let him know about the death and Abe shows up at the funeral. It is awkward for everyone but they manage to make things work.
This story takes place primarily during the time of Hurricane Katrina and it is about families and their dynamics. It has a lingering plot line that at times meanders and does not appear to be going anywhere specific. I had to make myself continue reading the book at times but, ultimately, it was rewarding. The characterizations are adequate but I did not have the feeling that I knew what really made anyone tick deep inside. The narrative is interesting and flows smoothly and the author has a nice way of presenting conversations. All in all, I think this is an author to watch in the future.
October 24, 2013
A compelling tale of human relationships and emotions, Katherine Hill’s “The Violet Hour” is a slow moving yet emotional tale of a rather dsyfunctional family. Telling the story of Abe and Cassandra Green, their lives, their marriage, their daughter, this is a classic family drama that ebbs and flows between events that influence and change them.
What I liked about this one is that it is not focussed on any one thing, more a selection of the ups and downs of life that change who we are. Told from the perspective of different players in the drama, the mother/daughter relationship is especially well drawn.
If you like your novels fast paced and heart stopping this is not for you – Ms Hill has a gentle rolling style that slowly but surely unravels the heart of her characters and tells you who they are – with love, loss, infidelity and desire all in the mix its a cleverly concocted and fascinating tale.
Recommended for lovers of angst and sprawling family histories where you will not love everyone you meet…
Happy Reading Folks!
**Thank you kindly to Penguin for the review copy via netgalley***
What I liked about this one is that it is not focussed on any one thing, more a selection of the ups and downs of life that change who we are. Told from the perspective of different players in the drama, the mother/daughter relationship is especially well drawn.
If you like your novels fast paced and heart stopping this is not for you – Ms Hill has a gentle rolling style that slowly but surely unravels the heart of her characters and tells you who they are – with love, loss, infidelity and desire all in the mix its a cleverly concocted and fascinating tale.
Recommended for lovers of angst and sprawling family histories where you will not love everyone you meet…
Happy Reading Folks!
**Thank you kindly to Penguin for the review copy via netgalley***
September 4, 2013
More of what I like; family drama, inner monologues of a person's past, their regrets and there musings on the present and of course the faint taste of scandalous behavior.
This book was an easy read but not without depth. We learn about the marriage and fall of Cassandra and Abe Green with the backdrop being her father's death that has brought, 8 years divorced Abe back on the scene.
We learn about their daughter Elizabeth and how she's navigated through the world with her parents apart.
There is nothing startling about the book, no neat fix no building plot to keep turning the pages. That's how I know this was a well written book. It was just a glimpse into the life of a family and and their choices and habits (alcohol, infidelity) and then living with their decisions.
This book was an easy read but not without depth. We learn about the marriage and fall of Cassandra and Abe Green with the backdrop being her father's death that has brought, 8 years divorced Abe back on the scene.
We learn about their daughter Elizabeth and how she's navigated through the world with her parents apart.
There is nothing startling about the book, no neat fix no building plot to keep turning the pages. That's how I know this was a well written book. It was just a glimpse into the life of a family and and their choices and habits (alcohol, infidelity) and then living with their decisions.
July 19, 2013
Katherine Hill begins her intimate and utterly beguiling first novel, The Violet Hour, on a boat. This leisure cruise ultimately charts the course of Hill’s novel. What we assume will be a fun excursion on the San Francisco Bay for Abe and Cassandra Green and their daughter, Elizabeth, leads to the end of a marriage. Hill then progresses the narrative forward from 1997 to 2005, an eight-year progression into the future that seems strange at first but then becomes clear. It is just the distance Hill’s distinctive and multi-faceted narrators need to illuminate both the union and the fracturing of a family.
Cassandra has not laid eyes on Abe in almost eight years when she, Elizabeth, and her siblings gather for the birthday of Cassandra’s father. When a tragic accident befalls Cassandra’s father and takes his life, his loved ones are left reeling.
Hill has a rationale for killing a character on his birthday when he is surrounded by his family. Cassandra’s father had run a funeral parlor in the basement of their home. For this family perhaps more so than for others, death is truly a part of life. Especially in late August of 2005.
Hill’s superbly crafted characters are especially attuned to the suffering that a storm called Katrina has inflicted upon the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Katrina left an indelible mark on both the region it hit and on our nation as a whole. As a person who went through Katrina’s destruction and aftermath, I do not see how a writer could set any kind of tale in late August and early September 2005 and not feature Katrina. It would be irresponsible otherwise. Hill draws a compelling and convincing parallel between Hurricane Katrina and the death of Cassandra’s father, nicely juxtaposing the two calamities. As a family is changed forever, a country is irrevocably altered. Thus, Hill effectually intertwines a family and a country both in the midst of loss.
Katrina’s flood waters provide Hill with the opportunity to bring her story full circle. Abe had relished the time he spent on the San Francisco Bay in his boat. Sure, the water might have been choppy at times, but the experience renewed him. Water nourishes us; we need it to survive. The essential liquid cleanses, soothes, and provides respite, but it also has a dark side. In Katrina, the water thunders, roils, gathers momentum and wreaks havoc on a city. Tiny vessels ferry residents to safety. As in the beginning of the story, Hill returns to boats. This time the boats are rescuing hurricane survivors and charting the course of others’ lives.
Deftly plotted, richly characterized, and brilliantly placed, The Violet Hour is a perfect novel for fans of Ghana Must Go. Hill knocked me over with her very personal portrayal of a family’s past and present. She knows how to keep readers turning pages. I am particularly pleased she highlights Katrina so prominently in the book. Without the historic and devastating storm, this story would definitely lose some of its impact
September 3, 2013
"The Violet Hour" stayed with me long after I finished reading it. Yes, I wanted to "know" what happened next....but I have an imagination, I can puzzle through that question. No, what lingered beyond the pages were the questions implicitly raised about family. How family creates us. How we evolve with and without our family. And, how we change them. This compact but rich story does many things but Hill's use of evocative language and sharp observations to present several generations of fire-breathing women is a standout. We get a keyhole look into what makes them tick and how their individual mysteries collide.
Eunice, Cassandra, and Elizabeth all come alive as individual characters and representatives of a time and place in the American landscape. I related to each of their struggles, pleasures, confusions, and imperfections. These aren't easy women -- but their complexity is what appeals to me. The author writes with a wisdom about human nature that revealed things I didn't know about myself while keeping the focus on this female trinity. I love it when a book does that!
The story is awash in water images -- in the same way Franzen's "Freedom" made me think about the multiple meanings of freedom, "The Violet Hour" brought me water -- as the sea, as a storm...as something that can hurt, as something that can heal. Once I realized what was happening, I actually went back to the beginning to watch how subtly the language had carried me along through the use of water.
I'll end by saying that this is a love story but not the traditional sort. Some reviews have focused on the book being about the end of a marriage. Okay, it's that. But it's also a love story about mother's and daughters. I am a daughter -- I know that my love/hate relationship with my mother forms the basis for a lot of who I am today. This book tells that story.
I picked "The Violet Hour" for my book group's September read. I'm sure we'll have a lively and provocative discussion
Eunice, Cassandra, and Elizabeth all come alive as individual characters and representatives of a time and place in the American landscape. I related to each of their struggles, pleasures, confusions, and imperfections. These aren't easy women -- but their complexity is what appeals to me. The author writes with a wisdom about human nature that revealed things I didn't know about myself while keeping the focus on this female trinity. I love it when a book does that!
The story is awash in water images -- in the same way Franzen's "Freedom" made me think about the multiple meanings of freedom, "The Violet Hour" brought me water -- as the sea, as a storm...as something that can hurt, as something that can heal. Once I realized what was happening, I actually went back to the beginning to watch how subtly the language had carried me along through the use of water.
I'll end by saying that this is a love story but not the traditional sort. Some reviews have focused on the book being about the end of a marriage. Okay, it's that. But it's also a love story about mother's and daughters. I am a daughter -- I know that my love/hate relationship with my mother forms the basis for a lot of who I am today. This book tells that story.
I picked "The Violet Hour" for my book group's September read. I'm sure we'll have a lively and provocative discussion
October 12, 2013
A good jumping off reference point for Katherine Hill's stirring first novel would be the novels of Jonathan Franzen. Like Freedom or The Corrections, The Violet Hour is a tightly woven multi-generational, multi-perspective novel whose characters don't always reflect our best national traits: sometimes narcissistic and self-absorbed, frequently unaware of their privilege, and always mired in the pettiness of their own lives. But while Franzen's authorial tone frequently degrades to a misanthropic sneer, Hill takes on these flawed characters with a more enduring sympathy. And for that, the characters become like old friends: not because we admire or even like them, but because they become, through gradual exposure, fully-rendered familiars.
Page by page, The Violet Hour reveals a family, for all their accomplishment and one-percent-er advantage, who is astoundingly impotent. A father who shrinks into a midlife masculine shadow, a mother so un-centered that she feels incapable of not having affairs, and an accomplished, driven young daughter who is divorced from those around her and seemingly un-self-aware as she repeats her parents' follies. And always nipping at our attention in the background is the unfolding spectral crisis of Katrina, each character dimly marveling at its ephemeral presence in the news but detached from the suffering and the political incompetence down the road from the setting's DC suburb. It is this duality, and Hill's masterly turns of phrase, that makes The Violet Hour such a compelling and wonderful novel: even as it draws us into sympathy for its characters' earnest desire to connect with each other, it does not shy away from indicting them for ignoring their privilege in the face of a great familial and natural storm.
An excellent debut novel, highly recommended.
Page by page, The Violet Hour reveals a family, for all their accomplishment and one-percent-er advantage, who is astoundingly impotent. A father who shrinks into a midlife masculine shadow, a mother so un-centered that she feels incapable of not having affairs, and an accomplished, driven young daughter who is divorced from those around her and seemingly un-self-aware as she repeats her parents' follies. And always nipping at our attention in the background is the unfolding spectral crisis of Katrina, each character dimly marveling at its ephemeral presence in the news but detached from the suffering and the political incompetence down the road from the setting's DC suburb. It is this duality, and Hill's masterly turns of phrase, that makes The Violet Hour such a compelling and wonderful novel: even as it draws us into sympathy for its characters' earnest desire to connect with each other, it does not shy away from indicting them for ignoring their privilege in the face of a great familial and natural storm.
An excellent debut novel, highly recommended.
January 6, 2014
The mundane and routine components of daily life can obscure or unveil the temperament of an individual, or perhaps transform them. In "The Violet Hour," the imperfect characters evolve in their relationships to one another and their understanding of themselves. Primarily taking place in Maryland during the same week as Katrina devastated New Orleans, this story of family, loss, tragedy and love skips into the past, providing understanding of the history and motivations of the many complicated characters. Beautifully written, the story grows, and in the last third of the novel, I kept wondering how Katherine Hill was going to be able to complete each of the stories as the remaining pages continued to dwindle. Fortunately, although she does not rectify all of the issues between her characters, I had the sense that all would eventually resolve itself well for the people I'd come to care for, and that they'd matured sufficiently to survive any further disappointments they might bring upon themselves.
July 24, 2013
This book got better and better as I read it. The prose was a pleasure, the plot was satisfying, and the characters are neither cloyingly heroic nor utterly despicable-- they're just real people with nuanced histories and eccentricities. Reading the story of the Greens is like peering into the world of the family that's been living across the street from you for decades. You are surprised and sometimes even dismayed by their thoughts and behavior, but then you forgive them because they are near and familiar, and because your family is no less real and no less in need of forgiving.
July 8, 2013
I received this copy from NetGalley.
The first chapter/ introduction held such promise for the book and the rest was bleh. The story starts with the end of a marriage and then moves both forward and backward explaining the ins and outs of this particular marriage, relationships familial, romantic, and such and how family quirks influence them.
The first chapter/ introduction held such promise for the book and the rest was bleh. The story starts with the end of a marriage and then moves both forward and backward explaining the ins and outs of this particular marriage, relationships familial, romantic, and such and how family quirks influence them.
October 3, 2013
This was a REAL book about REAL people and REAL relationships. All people and relationships are not pretty, fun, easy, carefree, and romantic. Solid characters who you could believe in and feel their pain, aloneness, isolation, loss, etc.. - worth a read with hot tea!
April 10, 2014
This book is about a modern family written in a non linear fashion. By this, I mean it goes backward and forward in time, showing how the characters got to where they are today (which is at Grandpa's funeral in Maryland).
They were not "likeable" per se, but who would be, if we were realistically written about? Probably no one! It showed each character with all their flaws hanging out and all their strengths as well.
I thought it was well written and real to life .....I mean no "happily ever after" (thank God), no wrapping up the loose ends....which really doesn't happen much in real life I think.
I hope to read more by this author.....
Further thoughts......what does the Violet Hour mean? I think it's a newer expression of the "blue hour" or "l'heure bleu"....meaning dusk...when the day dies, is over...the light that filters into the air......the darkening of the day.
Also I couldn't help noticing that the author constantly spoke of smells...."old people smell", "middle age people smell".......I've heard of "baby smell" and "old people smell", but not middle age smell.....odd....
They were not "likeable" per se, but who would be, if we were realistically written about? Probably no one! It showed each character with all their flaws hanging out and all their strengths as well.
I thought it was well written and real to life .....I mean no "happily ever after" (thank God), no wrapping up the loose ends....which really doesn't happen much in real life I think.
I hope to read more by this author.....
Further thoughts......what does the Violet Hour mean? I think it's a newer expression of the "blue hour" or "l'heure bleu"....meaning dusk...when the day dies, is over...the light that filters into the air......the darkening of the day.
Also I couldn't help noticing that the author constantly spoke of smells...."old people smell", "middle age people smell".......I've heard of "baby smell" and "old people smell", but not middle age smell.....odd....
January 5, 2014
I was given an advance reading copy of this book when I saw the author speak at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
I absolutely loved this book, its so beautifully written. The characters are complex and engaging and there is a real depth to the story. I like how the ending isn't 'the end' of any parts of the story really, the book is a snapshot of a time in the characters lives and there is so much more of their lives left for you to imagine.
I don't read a lot of fiction, but this was wonderful.
I absolutely loved this book, its so beautifully written. The characters are complex and engaging and there is a real depth to the story. I like how the ending isn't 'the end' of any parts of the story really, the book is a snapshot of a time in the characters lives and there is so much more of their lives left for you to imagine.
I don't read a lot of fiction, but this was wonderful.
September 20, 2013
The book's plot surrounds 3 main figures who individually, and collectively, work through feelings of vulnerability, separation and lost love. The author's writing makes these subjects entirely compelling and the story is beautifully written. This is the author's first work and I look forward to her next book.
May 10, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyed it. Read it between "The Goldfinch" and "The Corrections" and it flowed as nicely for me as those. I liked the characters and the prose, though I am not silly enough to conflate the characters' likability with the book's likability.
August 6, 2013
I gave this one a good shot reading about 130 pages but I just couldn't get into it. I didn't care for the story or any of the characters.
August 13, 2013
I loved this book. Elegant, haunting, and totally addictive. The way Hill deals with time is stunning.
October 17, 2013
I loved this book. Beautiful, evocative writing and richly-drawn characters. A wonderful debut by Katherine Hill.
December 23, 2013
This slice-of-life novel is very well written and the first by author Katherine Hill. I will be watching for more novels by her.
September 23, 2016
A beautifully observed, sensitively portrayed story of a marriage and a family in crisis.
September 16, 2024
Around 1.5
These types of stories (about unsatisfied people who do things just because) aren't for me, that is clearly a fact, and if not for the promise of romance in the blurb I'd not have gotten it.
These types of stories (about unsatisfied people who do things just because) aren't for me, that is clearly a fact, and if not for the promise of romance in the blurb I'd not have gotten it.
October 23, 2013
This review was originally published on Art Attack/Philly.com:
Most of the way through the first scene of her debut novel The Violet Hour, Katherine Hill has expertly—deftly—brought her characters and the reader to the edge. The characters are the three members of the Green family: Abe, a rheumatologist, his wife Cassandra, an artist, and their 18 year old daughter Elizabeth, who is off to Harvard in the fall, “a family rendered in its most essential, basic parts: mother, father, child.”
Hill has herself rendered the scene—the three Greens are out on Abe’s new sailboat in the San Francisco Bay—with only its essentials: time flashing as it does on the water, emotions glinting then falling away, the sea silent yet pregnant with danger. For a young writer, Hill is indeed particularly capable as a manufacturer of taught, precise imagery, which she most effectively unleashes here as the book’s first plot point takes its turn.
Cassandra emerges in these first page as both passive—a victim of sorts—and the aggressor in a marriage she is constantly testing. Now, the gin and tonics have run out and a not-so-carefully veiled secret has emerged, catching Elizabeth, innocent enough in her Harvard sweatshirt and bikini bottoms, unawares. “And then, suddenly,” Hill writes,
Abe’s leap occurs around 1997; most of the rest of the book, which takes place in 2005 as Katrina unfolds, is an act of reconnection. But like an old, frayed wire, the Greens themselves flicker and spark—and sometimes go dark—in the process.
Hill wrote The Violet Hour while living in Philadelphia and working at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as a speech writer. And the book inhabits the comfortable Wharton world of Manhattan, suburban DC, and the Bay Area; Philadelphia, interestingly, doesn’t quite fit (and only exists as the setting of Abe’s strange childhood). Hill most certainly understands this ecosystem; she describes the corporate-sanitary and yet somehow authentic seeming landscape of downtown Bethesda, MD with aplomb, for example, and is at ease with the particular mania of upper middle class Bay Area parents.
The cloistered nature of this world is only emphasized by Hill’s choice to place her story in August, 2005, during Katrina. News of it—and the government’s racist response—trickles in. But the Greens, now grappling with a family tragedy, can’t quite make sense of it. Vaguely liberal, Abe and Cassandra can only mutter empty political slogans and Elizabeth, about to graduate now from medical school, demonstrates no interest in responding to the greatest public health emergency of the era (in fact, she wants to enter the cushiest medical field, dermatology). Elizabeth isn’t quite comfortable with herself, but she can’t seem to push herself out of the comfort zone set up for high-achieving professionals. When she and a friend are aggressively confronted on the DC Metro by a deranged African-American veteran—a scene trope I wish Hill had avoided—Elizabeth thinks the man, who might certainly kill them, also might be a sage. She is yearning, in her divided consciousness, for a more meaningful connection to the world.
Hill is most persuasive as a writer when she defines and explores these kinds of relentless internal conflicts and divisions (and less interesting presenting realistic-sounding contemporary dialogue). Here is Cassandra through Elizabeth’s eyes:
The Violet Hour, due out on July 16, is in fact filled with this kind of controlled and yet expansive prose, but it’s ultimately, perhaps, over-reliant on plot levers and beautiful people and easy, explosive sex. That it’s Hill’s debut, satisfying an increasingly risk averse book market, is ample excuse. In her next one—and there most certainly will be more novels coming—she ought to push her talented pen into more difficult territory.
Most of the way through the first scene of her debut novel The Violet Hour, Katherine Hill has expertly—deftly—brought her characters and the reader to the edge. The characters are the three members of the Green family: Abe, a rheumatologist, his wife Cassandra, an artist, and their 18 year old daughter Elizabeth, who is off to Harvard in the fall, “a family rendered in its most essential, basic parts: mother, father, child.”
Hill has herself rendered the scene—the three Greens are out on Abe’s new sailboat in the San Francisco Bay—with only its essentials: time flashing as it does on the water, emotions glinting then falling away, the sea silent yet pregnant with danger. For a young writer, Hill is indeed particularly capable as a manufacturer of taught, precise imagery, which she most effectively unleashes here as the book’s first plot point takes its turn.
Cassandra emerges in these first page as both passive—a victim of sorts—and the aggressor in a marriage she is constantly testing. Now, the gin and tonics have run out and a not-so-carefully veiled secret has emerged, catching Elizabeth, innocent enough in her Harvard sweatshirt and bikini bottoms, unawares. “And then, suddenly,” Hill writes,
her mother was sitting, gripping the bench with her fingertips, and he father was standing, purposefully, on the very edge of the starboard gunwale. They were silent under the noise of the wind. And then her mother stood and started to say something, and her father turned his back and dove. His body was in the air for an instant over the water, and then, as if by some camera trick, there was nothing but water and air.
Abe’s leap occurs around 1997; most of the rest of the book, which takes place in 2005 as Katrina unfolds, is an act of reconnection. But like an old, frayed wire, the Greens themselves flicker and spark—and sometimes go dark—in the process.
Hill wrote The Violet Hour while living in Philadelphia and working at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as a speech writer. And the book inhabits the comfortable Wharton world of Manhattan, suburban DC, and the Bay Area; Philadelphia, interestingly, doesn’t quite fit (and only exists as the setting of Abe’s strange childhood). Hill most certainly understands this ecosystem; she describes the corporate-sanitary and yet somehow authentic seeming landscape of downtown Bethesda, MD with aplomb, for example, and is at ease with the particular mania of upper middle class Bay Area parents.
The cloistered nature of this world is only emphasized by Hill’s choice to place her story in August, 2005, during Katrina. News of it—and the government’s racist response—trickles in. But the Greens, now grappling with a family tragedy, can’t quite make sense of it. Vaguely liberal, Abe and Cassandra can only mutter empty political slogans and Elizabeth, about to graduate now from medical school, demonstrates no interest in responding to the greatest public health emergency of the era (in fact, she wants to enter the cushiest medical field, dermatology). Elizabeth isn’t quite comfortable with herself, but she can’t seem to push herself out of the comfort zone set up for high-achieving professionals. When she and a friend are aggressively confronted on the DC Metro by a deranged African-American veteran—a scene trope I wish Hill had avoided—Elizabeth thinks the man, who might certainly kill them, also might be a sage. She is yearning, in her divided consciousness, for a more meaningful connection to the world.
Hill is most persuasive as a writer when she defines and explores these kinds of relentless internal conflicts and divisions (and less interesting presenting realistic-sounding contemporary dialogue). Here is Cassandra through Elizabeth’s eyes:
She seemed to have allowed her features to fall out of connection with one another, her mouth slack, her eyes wobbling in and out of focus. She looked, in that instant, utterly lost inside herself, as though her body were also a costume that had somehow slipped askew.
The Violet Hour, due out on July 16, is in fact filled with this kind of controlled and yet expansive prose, but it’s ultimately, perhaps, over-reliant on plot levers and beautiful people and easy, explosive sex. That it’s Hill’s debut, satisfying an increasingly risk averse book market, is ample excuse. In her next one—and there most certainly will be more novels coming—she ought to push her talented pen into more difficult territory.
September 2, 2013
Goodreads Description- Life hasn’t always been perfect for Abe and Cassandra Green, but an afternoon on the San Francisco Bay might be as good as it gets. Abe is a rheumatologist, piloting his coveted new boat. Cassandra is a sculptor, finally gaining modest attention for her art. Their beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, is heading to Harvard in the fall. Somehow, they’ve made things work. But then, out of nowhere, they plunge into a terrible fight. Cassandra has been unfaithful. In a fit of fury, Abe throws himself off the boat.
A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a modern family through past and present, from the funeral home in the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to the San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Greens navigate the passage of time—the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age, the headiness of desire, the bitterness of loss—they must come to terms with the fragility of their intimacy, the strange legacies they inherit from their parents, and the kind of people they want to be. Exquisitely written, The Violet Hour is the deeply moving story of a family suddenly ripped apart, but then just possibly reborn.
I basically read this in one sitting. It was an interesting take on infidelity in a marriage and the consequences that can occur. I liked Cassandra's quirky family that live above the family funeral home and her family members gave the story some flavor. One thing that I didn't understand is why Elizabeth, Cassandra's daughter, was so angry all of the time. I don't want to spoil any of the plotline but I understand some of her anger but for her level of success and to have this sudden breakdown was hard for me to understand. I also liked the scene between Cassandra and her ex, Abe, when he comes to visit Cassandra. I think it provided a cathartic experience for both of them and to finally get over long held bad feelings and to get on with life, rather than stay in the static existence that they were in. All in all this was a good story of family, love and loss. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a book with these themes. 4 stars.
A love story that begins with the end of a marriage, The Violet Hour follows a modern family through past and present, from the funeral home in the Washington suburbs where Cassandra and her siblings grow up to the San Francisco public health clinic where Abe and Cassandra first meet. As the Greens navigate the passage of time—the expectations of youth, the concessions of middle age, the headiness of desire, the bitterness of loss—they must come to terms with the fragility of their intimacy, the strange legacies they inherit from their parents, and the kind of people they want to be. Exquisitely written, The Violet Hour is the deeply moving story of a family suddenly ripped apart, but then just possibly reborn.
I basically read this in one sitting. It was an interesting take on infidelity in a marriage and the consequences that can occur. I liked Cassandra's quirky family that live above the family funeral home and her family members gave the story some flavor. One thing that I didn't understand is why Elizabeth, Cassandra's daughter, was so angry all of the time. I don't want to spoil any of the plotline but I understand some of her anger but for her level of success and to have this sudden breakdown was hard for me to understand. I also liked the scene between Cassandra and her ex, Abe, when he comes to visit Cassandra. I think it provided a cathartic experience for both of them and to finally get over long held bad feelings and to get on with life, rather than stay in the static existence that they were in. All in all this was a good story of family, love and loss. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a book with these themes. 4 stars.
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