Tiepolo Blue

by James Cahill

Ben turns and grins ironically. ‘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.’

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.

Genres: Fiction, Dark Academia, LGBT, Queer, Historical Fiction, Historical, Contemporary

352 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2022

Reviews

[Barry Pierce · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an incredibly disappointing book. Probably wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't so vastly and clunkily overwritten, you can tell Cahill comes from the world of academia. Our main character, Don, is truly just lamentable, he doesn't have a single positive aspect to his personality. As someone who did their dissertation on the 90s British art scene, this should've been written for me, tragically I don't think it was written for anyone but its author.

[Kalliope · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel has very many of the ingredients that would delight me. In fact, I had ordered it before it was out. The title picks from Roberto Calasso’s Tiepolo Pink , which is a quote from Proust’s sentence “rose Tiepolo”, but if Calasso’s is a treatise on a series of drawings by the painter, Cahill’s is a novel. James Cahill writes about art and has been engaged in several art exhibitions. This is his first novel.

In Tiepolo Blue, Cahill has chosen to write about a world he knows well. It is a story about art, art history and art historians. We move from a College in Cambridge, to a disguised version of Dulwich Picture Gallery. In between the reader is offered a meditation on the relationship (or lack of thereof) between contemporary art and art tradition; an enactment of the rivalry between Academic and Curatorial art circles; an elaborate mix of both psychological and social scrutiny; a complex plot that develops elements that will appeal to the LGBT community enriched with Faustian and Bildungsroman tones; and all this interspersed with some very beautifully written passages, in particular those which elaborate on Tiepolo’s art. Cahill has an eye and a pen.

And yet, the novel did not grasp my mind and delight as I would have thought. Overall, it all seemed too overwrought, there were too many trendy elements, and the two main characters appeared too close to caricatures. Don is somewhat of a dork, playing up to his own stereotype and Val is a vaudeville dandy, whom the reader expects will eventually take off his disguise.

Throughout the read, though, I kept asking myself, why has Cahill taken on Calasso’s title?

Nonetheless, this is a solid first novel. I look forward to more of Cahill’s works.

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this story could’ve worked better for me if it had been told from a first person point of view. I mean, at least I could’ve tried to believe that the guy was an unreliable narrator who wanted us to think that, for some reason, and despite being in his early forties, he didn’t have any sexual experience whatsoever.

As it is though, the story was told by a third person omniscient narrator and, even for 1990s standards, I struggled to swallow such naivety. Even less so, when the guy was described as a handsome and intelligent lad. He might not have known who he was or what he really liked but that doesn’t mean people around him also didn’t, if you know what I mean.

This is in fact one of those novels where, despite some really strong writing, I felt like the author let the pace slow down a bit too much and often in favour of some really heavy descriptions of places, artists and works of art.

After a very slow and descriptive start reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier in style (gothic) and approach to storytelling (with the setting becoming a character in itself) the story did pick up speed and became more compelling.

Unfortunately, character development was lacking throughout. Not only that, but the author's descriptive approach had a heavy dreamlike quality which never allowed me to connect with the story.

The sex scenes were good and quite unforgettable, but all the twists and turns and the ending really didn’t work for me, I’m afraid.

All in all, this was a complete mixed bag for me.

With thanks to Bert’s Books (www.bertsbooks.co.uk) for the advance copy.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

The names of Hollinghurst, St. Aubyn and Forster have all been utilized to extol the virtues (and perhaps deficiencies) of Cahill's debut - and one can readily see why (Cahill even cheekily includes a minor character named Maurice Forster, a senile former museum director). As I adore all three of these predecessors, perhaps I am Cahill's ideal audience, so let me just say I was enchanted throughout.

Cahill's set pieces just keep getting more and more involving, haunting, bizarre and enticing, in a sure, exacting prose that is never stodgy or pretentious. Although his characters can be infuriating, they are all rendered, even the minor ones, with dimensionality. It is no wonder Stephen Fry provides enthusiastic encomiums on the cover - he'd be ideal casting for the enigmatic Valentine Black, should this ever be adapted for screen (or more likely, a BBC television adaptation).

I'm going to be lazy and just refer those interested to the incisive Guardian review below, but let me just end by saying this is one of the most beautifully bound volumes I've seen in recent years - not only the gorgeous gold embossed cover, but also full color endpapers of one of the titular artist's masterpieces. Highly recommended, and quite possibly my #1 book of the year.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

in theory i'm always up for a book about a disastrous cambridge closet case, but i wasn't a fan of this one. heads up beforehand that the art criticism is cool and the setting and place is done well, and that other people seem to like this one more than i do. however.

tiepolo blue seems like it wants to be several things and i wasn't really satisfied by any of them. it's a tragic novel about a self-sabotaging, behind-the-times academic, sort of, but it's also him being sabotaged by his former grad advisor and unrequited love...but neither don nor val have sufficiently complex characterisation and gravitas to pull that off. val would need to be a super charismatic larger-than-life presence for that to work, and as it is, he's basically just a second-rate quentin crisp impersonator. plus we only see him for most of the book through the occasional bare-bones phone call, then we get a big narrative download in the late stages of the book that's meant to set him up as a Machiavel, but which actually just feels amusingly low-key in the moment (he has...adoptive parents! valentine isn't his christian name!!)

(slight digression but i would have loved if they'd pressed on don/val's dynamic as former prize student/grad advisor, it would have unmuddied some of the waters behind their dynamic in the present, and also consolidated val's controlling temperament more realistically)

the book feels a bit 'insert theme here, insert callback here, insert doubled identity and subversion of narrative reliability here', it's somewhat paint-by-numbers, when a structurally and thematically less sound book would have been more enjoyable if it focused more on characterisation. most characters are variants on Enigmatic Beauty Who Knows Better Than Don or Straightlaced Staff Member Confused About Why Don Just Passed Out On Their Rug. erica/angela disappears a third of the way in. characters regularly drop out of the narrative (justice for the master's lesbian(?) wife). don gives the exact same wishy-washy 'boo 2 the libs' speech at two separate events. every one of don's mistakes is incredibly heavy-handed and telegraphed 15 pages in advance. also did my eyes go funny or did ben have to explain the AIDS epidemic to don in the year of our lord nineteen ninety five?

the book is very competently written, and cahill is clearly making substantial use of his experience in both academia and the art world (as a pedantic cambridge alum i was occasionally muttering stuff to myself like 'why would don be in a panic about oversleeping until 7am, he's giving his lecture at earliest 9am and the sidgwick site is like a 15min walk away', but there weren't any egregious intrusions on sense of place). but the book is bogged down in the logistics of exhibitions and in don being confused in different locales and in encounters that don't progress the narrative.

also besides the book not being very fun (which is sad for me but fully understandable if that's not the book's aim) it is also not very sexy. bathhouse scene B+ but it comes too suddenly. it's not a 'simmering closet case sexual awakening' book, but if you're gonna do sad man sexual failure being dumped in it by his unrequited loves, it's weird to combine that with a few elements of simmering closet case sexual awakening that don’t fully come together.

as for the ending i did not. uh. like it

[od1_40reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Cahill’s debut novel was a mixed bag for me. I’ve settled on a three-star rating as at times I felt I could’ve given it four, but then again at times perhaps even a two.

At it’s heart I think there’s a good story here, and I thought it got off to a strong start as I enjoyed the early chapters set in Cambridge more than the later ones charting the protagonist’s demise, trying to adjust to life in 90’s London.

A few things bothered me… firstly a few of the London locations where a bit all over the place, including a bar in the book called The Sphinx, which is clearly meant to be The Vauxhall Tavern. Carhill locates The Sphinx in Hern Hill, but then inside the bar he included customers talking about Vauxhall. Perhaps Carhill included this to give a clue as to the bar’s real inspiration… but it’s just a bit too messy for me. (Incidentally according to local queer legend, the comment about Princess Di and Freddie Mercury is true!)

Also, we’re to believe that Dom, the protagonist, has led a life at Cambridge University completed sheltered from the outside world, but can it have really been be so sheltered that he’s not even heard about the AIDS pandemic by the mid 90s?!

The writing, when talking about Art History, Cahill’s area of expertise, is convincing, even beautiful at times. But when he talks about the London art scene and gay scene, in fact most things out of the realm of classical art, it came across as naive and cliché. Perhaps Cahill is almost as out of his own depth in these worlds as his protagonist?

Hollinghurst has been mentioned in several reviews I’ve read of Tiepolo Blue, and to be honest I’ve not read enough Hollinghurst to comment on this (in fact, I think, only The Line of Beauty so far, I need to change this!). But I also felt Cahill might’ve been trying to evoke some of the sense of longing and desire EM Forster creates in Maurice; though not nearly as successfully in my opinion.

I was also confused as to who this book is for, and ultimately settled on Cahill himself.

However, I don’t want to be too damning… for the most part I was engaged and intrigued to see where the story went next; and Cahill does well at creating a few plot twists and tying up of lose ends towards the book’s conclusion.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted an experience where my eyes were opened to the beauty of new art but instead, I found myself drawn into a world of horrible people who had no reason to be.

Basically, it's a whole book of meandering plots and plot holes. No answers are ever given to the questions raised and to be honest no thought to the context of them.

I found the characters unbelievable too, was Don that stupid that he couldn't see he was being played the whole time? Was he so wrapped up in Cambridge life that he had no idea what AIDS was?

This book probably should be a 2 star book if I'm honest.

[Reid Page-McTurner · Rating 2 out of 5]

REVIEW It’s so pretty! So so so very pretty. That’s about all the good I have to say about this totally pointless, utter snoozefest of a book. Who is this book meant for? I’m gay. I love art. I love heavily literary books. And yet I struggle to see the point of this book that follows a wet blanket protagonist, a couple forcible plot twists, a half dozen poorly conceived characters, and a few hundred pages of blah blah blah blah blah leading up to nothing. I know what he was trying to achieve, and boy oh boy did he miss the target. 2/5 for some pretty writing and the pretty cover. #jamescahill #tiepoloblue

[Bob Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books feels to me like a clever and thoughtful companion piece to Alan Hollinghurst's 'The Line of Beauty', a book I adore, with a similar sense of a sweltering summer, sexual energy, and lingering darkness, but it also takes a trip into unreliability and memory that I found riveting and the best kind of unsettling.

I was gripped by the way this story unravels to show us the life of Don Lamb, a professor at Cambridge who is obsessed with the artwork of Tiepolo, and whose various disgraces and scandals seem to layer as he progresses through life.

His move to London yields even more of these scandals, alongside a slow-burning realisation about his sexuality and about what he has been too oblivious to see along.

His obliviousness, and/or hyperfocus, was one of the most fascinating things about this book for me, and a character even picks him up on this, asking why he focuses on the skies in Tiepolo's pictures, and not the people living in the scenes. This thread is followed neatly throughout the book, as we realise that far more has been buried deep within Don, or even just wilfully ignored.

There is something terrifying and lurking underneath this book, much like the art he spends all day observing.

Indeed, his life is almost entirely about seeing and not seeing, missing out on the obvious whilst having a deep understanding of the abstract.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Karen Van den Borre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will start out by saying that this book is not for everyone. I can imagine readers finding it much too academic and pompous, our protagonist Don being a rather dislikeable Cambridge professor who has been living in a bubble most his life. Out of touch with the real world, Don comes across as pedantic and oppressed. Throughout the book, things happen that bring forth certain awakenings in Don as well as a loss of his grasp on reality and his sense of self. It is this slow shift to a darker, queer, even phantasmagorical storytelling that really drew me into the book and kept me reading. The language is lush and evocative too, I found it a joy to read!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In ‘Tiepolo Blue’ by James Cahill, I found myself reading under a looming sense of some impending catastrophe that I felt was going to pounce upon me suddenly, mostly due to hype about the book and the tantalising blurb. But then I realised I'd reached 50% and the narrative was still quietly, pleasantly, unobtrusively descriptive:

’The sun had broken through the clouds, rinsing the garden in glassy brightness.’

This is a character study with more than a touch of Reginald Perrin and Prufrock about it, with a dash of Eleanor Rigby, and a smidgen of John Cleese. I was reminded of the devastating wit and sensitive observational style of ‘Gaudy Night’ by Dorothy L. Sayers, as our protagonist Don Lamb, bumbles through his life in Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge.

The purest example of Cahill's writing style can be lifted from what I would call the climax of the plot – well, perhaps not ‘climax’, as that can better be applied to a later scene – but upon the night when our love-interest Ben initiates Don into the contemporary art scene of the ‘90s and Soho nightlife, having revealed the titular artwork he has compiled from culling Don's academic art-historian source materials:

‘They set out at four o’clock and walk down to Herne Hill, passing the Rosses’ house on Craxton Road, then treading the border of Brockwell Park, on towards Denmark Hill. In the heat, people fill the streets. On a mound of grass at the foot of a tower block, two girls in crop-tops are bending over with laughter. They are in their early teens. One of them sits down on the grass and rolls onto her side. Her hair falls in a curl across an eye. The other eye meets Don’s as he and Ben pass.’

This is the stuff of the novel: the reader assumes the role of spectator, adopting Don's idiosyncratic passive place in the narrative. He is voyeur in his own life; what happens to him is viewed at one remove. Don figuratively watches his life on a cinema screen, as objects manoeuvre themselves in front of him as static or moving images: the sculptures of Venus in the Brockwell Collection as they smash to the floor; the grotesque drunk who performs, jester-like, in front of Don on a bus; Val Black's white satin suit and the red wine stain with which Don sullies it; the gas cylinder in Val's House Beautiful that Don interprets as a Minoan pot; and, of course, skies.

“Look ahead – the converging pavements, the cylindrical building at the junction. You could build a frame around the scene and it would resemble a painting of the Italian Renaissance, structurally at least: you could draw lines over the surface of the image, mapping the recession of space.” [Don] tilts his head back and squints.’

‘When he walks onto the poolside, his towel slung over one shoulder, he sees a large rectangular island of water. The heads of early-morning swimmers bob above the turquoise surface. […] The pool sides are crowded with people. Two girls sprint past him and jump, one then the other, sending geysers leaping into the air. Through his half-closed eyes, air and water become the same substance – pure blue, the same blue as in Tiepolo’s frescoes, only stronger, as if the skies of the paintings have concentrated into a brilliant essence.’

What Don views is often new to him, but simultaneously in a state of degeneration or decomposition. This loops the entire plot round to the SICK BED artwork installed on the lawn at Peterhouse, which symbolises Don’s disentanglement from academia, in fact – his own unravelling, these found/looked-at objects are often signifiers of Don’s impending demise:

‘Afterwards, they come to a straggling parade of shops. Teenagers hang around the entrances. Plastic boxes stacked outside a greengrocer’s release the sweet-acrid scent of fruit and veg. The next shopfront consists of a glass sarcophagus arrayed with raw meat – cross-sectioned, minced, cubed, patterned with creamy fat and skewered with star-shaped pieces of green card that announce prices and weights in scribbled pen. The colours of objects, their small details, enter Don’s vision like new phenomena – things he’s never seen.’

‘Ripping at the foliage, he sees that the creepers conceal other objects – old tins, scaffolding poles, tyres stacked in a cylinder, glass bottles caked in grime. Woodlice scurry as he dislodges an empty litre bottle of Courvoisier. He continues to tear at the greenery. Buried in a mound of ivy is what looks like a car engine, a compression of blackened tubes and valves, and next to it, a heap of old clothes – leather jackets, jeans and a fur coat piled up like geological seams. The fabrics have been reduced almost to compost but are still identifiable – just – as what they once were.’

At the close of the book, objectification is rounded off nicely: found objects melding with Art History, significant figures in Don’s life (Valentine Black, Erica Jay, Mariam Schwarz), and the unknowable (unviewable?) truths underlying his reality.

The same theory can be applied to the ‘locked-out lover’ motif that punctuates the novel. Don is repeatedly refused entry:

‘He tries to open the door to Ina’s annex. It is locked. He leans his head on the frosted glass, but the choppy surface discloses nothing. In a kitchen drawer, he finds a key with a tag marked ‘Back door’. This defunct route to the garden is behind the sofa in the television room adjacent to the kitchen. He goes through and heaves the leather chesterfield out of the way. The upper half of the door is glazed, but the view outside is blocked by a bush.’

Even characters who meaningfully shape his existence, such as Paul, exclude him from their sphere, just as he is progressively pushed out of his own domain of art historian:

‘Don peers through the glass. It is some kind of garden store. Paul’s shed. The interior is orderly and spare, like an armoury. Pairs of black wellington boots – clean, gleaming – stand in a row, rising in height to thigh-high waders. One pair is slimmer and sleeker than the rest, more like jodhpurs. Bamboo canes, hooked at one end, lie sideways on a shelf. Against the back wall, sacks of peat are stacked in the shape of a couch and topped by a blanket. Above, hanging from hooks, are a coil of yellow hosepipe, a clawlike rake, and a complicated harness – all leather straps and shining buckles. His eyes wander over the small details.’

Don’s repulsion from the lives of those whom he objectifies is best illustrated with his incursion into Goldsmith’s College – a realm he should dominate, but is instead brutally expelled from:

‘Unseen, Don looks around the circle of students. Their faces are so different from those he lectured in Cambridge. […] Without meaning to, Don has opened the door yet wider. They turn – all of them – to look at him.
“Can I help you?” says the older man.
Don scans the faces that are turned in unison towards him […]. “I’m an art historian,” he says. “A professor."
“Whoever you are, you are interrupting my class. Please go.”
The man places a hand on Don’s arm and edges him back through the door.
“Get out of here, dickhead!” the girl shouts […].
The door slams and Don is alone in the corridor. […] He tries the door handle again, rattling the aluminium lever and pushing with all his weight, but it has been locked from the inside.’

And if Don is the disconnected observer of his own life, locked-out, repulsed, even banished; Val is the Machiavellian player moving the pieces round the chessboard in Don's flaccid self-reportage:

‘Don has played his role, but Val has been observing and orchestrating.’

Don’s life is performed in front of him, behind a veil, the players having been cast and directed by Valentine.

The painting, Poussin’s Triumph of David that comes back to Don’s lifeless, sagging directorship at the Brockwell Collection from the museum conservator’s vigorous cleaning, damaged by the stringent chemicals, reads like a meta-self-conscious comment from Cahill:

‘[Don] gazes at the remains of the painting. He is struck, most of all, by the shimmering loveliness of the scene in its dissolved state. It’s as if a fine gauze has descended over the picture. The figures in their flowing robes have turned to soft-edged impressions. Hard forms have become crops of weightless, powdery colour. And yet the colours themselves have survived – strengthened, even. The whole thing pulses with blue, orange and umber. Goliath’s head is an ochre silhouette, as featureless as a face seen against a light-filled window. […] He thinks of his own artifice of his own role [at the Brockwell], in this place, and asks who – or what – will shake him free. Involuntarily, he stretches out his hand and touches the tip of each of the boy’s fingers. The veneer of the painting wobbles at his touch. It feels smooth, dry and unexpectedly warm.’

Don is reaching out to touch his own existence, trying to make substantial contact with his life, shape some actuality, but the response is ‘wobbly’; insubstantial, precarious. This novel reads as a momentary glimpse into The Life of Don Lamb – just like David Nobbs’s Reginald Perrin – as his footing shifts and he outgrows the scope of closeted Professor of Art History. However, life can only ever be applied in the loosest of terms. Don’s intellectual or emotional connection with the series of rolling scenes that serve as his existence remains as numb as is his response to the seminal black&white photograph he finds of his younger self in a punt with Val at Cambridge. Only with Ben does Don approach anything like active agency:

'His desire to gaze [at Ben] is also a desire to feel, hold, and possess.'

Ultimately, toward the end of the book, we read that Don has ‘seen enough pictures.’ The closure of the book is dazzling. ‘Tiepolo Blue’ reminded me of Sarah Winman's style - crisp and concise character studies – life looked at; the desire to be looked back upon.

My deep thanks go to Hodder & Stoughton for an advanced digital copy through Netgalley in exchange for review.
Publication Date 9th June 2022.

[Laura Spira · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this on the basis of good reviews but I found it very tedious. The author is clearly very knowledgeable about art but doesn't write about it very well - few authors do, bringing art to life in text is not easy.
The central character is so lacking in personality that I concluded he must be some kind of cipher and that I was completely missing the point of the book.
I found the writing style florid and Don's long walks around south London became very boring. The book appears to be set in the 1990s but a bus conductor with a ticket machine is mentioned - I thought they had disappeared much earlier. When my mind focuses on small details like that it's a sure sign that I'm not engaged with a book. Very disappointing.

[Angus Meek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Shades of Hollinghurst.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

with exceptionally exquisite prose, densely divine references to art, sexuality and the culture shift of 90s london, tainted with an air of ambiguity and distrust, tiepolo blue is a disarming debut of the best kind. comparisons to alan hollinghurst's queer literary powerhouse, the line of beauty, certainly ring true in some regards, but there's an evasive nature to tiepolo blue that makes it impossible to truly pin down. complexity lurks behind every paragraph and cahill ensures that we are never quite sure where we stand with his upper-class characters who are detached from the world around them. intensely gripping, beautifully composed and full of twists, tiepolo blue is going to be a standout summer read for so many.

professor don lamb knows very little of the world outside the walls of the peterhouse in cambridge university. engrossed in his research of the skies of tiepolo, he is impervious to those around him. a man who is often present, yet absent from the camaraderie of his fellows with the exception of his gregarious and effervescent mentor, valentine black. after his reputation falls into disrepute when an appearance on radio four goes terribly wrong, don finds himself released from his academic duties and cast adrift into the world outside the university's walls. under val's guidance, he finds a job as a museum director, keen to show off his prowess and knowledge of the classical world. but times are changing, friendships are hard to come by and he becomes increasingly unsure of how platonic and helpful val's feelings towards him really are.

the dichotomy between sexual liberation and youth during the 90s versus repression, conservativism and traditional schools of thought, plays a key role throughout the course of the novel. cahill makes it abundantly clear that don is an outsider from his peers; he is sexually repressed, after a series of rejections from men he becomes detached from all romantic and sexual inclinations. his right-leaning views are a direct contradiction to the transgressive, shocking art of his contemporaries who navigate conversations about race, class and the political sphere with ease. we are never truly sympathic to don, as cahill's writing style keeps him at arm's length. with the introduction of ben, he presents us with don's antithesis, someone who can potentially bring him out of his shell and into the world around him. yet i personally felt, there was too little development within ben's characterisation to fully achieve this potential.

tiepolo blue has some of the most beautiful writing, imagery and prose that i have ever read. the plot, at times slow-paced, erred cautiously into laborious at times, but cahill's immaculately chosen word felt carefully pieced together, symbolism and meaning dripping from every letter. i'm no art historian, but i fully enjoyed the references to high culture, classical art and the inner sanctum of those working within the humanities. as the novel wore on, the ending felt forced and sudden, and i still haven't made sense of why the novel met the end it did. i enjoyed the twists, the unreliable air of distrust that permeated between don and val and don's gradual acceptance of his self and his sexuality.

a big thank you to sceptre for my proof copy of tiepolo blue, which is out now!

[Daren Kearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing novel that continues to wrong foot the reader right to the end.
At first I thought the story started off like a Kingsley Amis academic novel with a curmudgeonly Professor who is obsessed with his own art interests and is closed to everything else. Don resigns from his post after a clash about a modern art installation in his courtyard. He is manoeuvred into a directorship post for an art gallery in Dulwich by his long-standing friend Val, who has an unrequited love for him. Then it becomes a story of obsession and yearning as Don falls in love with Ben, an art student, and he explores the love he has always denied himself.
There are some increasingly grotesque scenes, where you are not really sure whether some are hallucinated or real; based on his desire and jealousies.
There is some wry humour. I was particularly amused by the introduction of an early dial-up computer for the art gallery and the first ever use it gets is to look at porn.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5 from me, making for a reluctant 4 stars on Goodreads...

I almost put this one down, never to be picked up again, until I finally felt something about 8 chapters in. The first 7 were an absolute slog.

I heard about this one via some bloggers and reviews, some of which called it 'sexy' and 'titillating' - I must have skimmed over those chapters.

The elements this book does get more right are intrigue, and psychological happenings. Cahill may also have done something clever with references to Tiepolo paintings, but if he did they were lost on me as I'm not an avid spectator of classical paintings. In fact, this book may not have been intended for me at all. Accessible? Perhaps not.

[Alex Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally flogged my way through this. Tedious - don't bother.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

you know what, yeah i'm gonna give it 4.
It's the kind of "beautifully written" that inspires you to write your own things. You can definitely feel the academic sentence, which is not something I dislike.
Don is detestable at first: I was worried I wouldn't relate or feel close to him at all, but the character development!!

More than about a story about queerness, it is, to my understanding, a story about letting go. Of pressure, the past, what you expect your future to be.
4 and not 5 because yes, the start is a bit long. But about 7 chapters in, it's difficult to stop.
God, it hurts to finish that one.

[Mark Kwesi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[charlotte, · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rep: gay mc, gay & lesbian side characters

[A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just one embarrassing, miserable scene after the next, and just about the most unlikable protagonist I've ever encountered.

[Erick Adams Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

La historia de un cuarentón intelectual rancio frustrado con su vida que se cree superior a los demás, pero que en realidad está falto de interacción humana. Un completo sinsentido.

[Tripfiction · Rating 5 out of 5]

Novel set in DULWICH and CAMBRIDGE

YOU TUBE REVIEW: https://youtu.be/W1S3OsebZSY

4.5*



The cover drew me to pick this book up and also, Tiepolo, a Rococo artist of the 18th Century, was part of the title (although his work is not really my cup of tea), it hinted at a novel with artistic content.

The novel starts out in Cambridge, at Peterhouse College where we meet Don, a don, professor, whose speciality is art history and who is currently involved in studying the skies in Tiepolo’s paintings. He lives a fairly secluded life, it’s very safe, sheltered from the exigencies of the world and he likes his routines. He has a room and study, he eats regularly in the refectory with other highfalutin minds from the world of academia and life is acceptable and certainly not challenging in a worldly way.

In the era of Tracey Emin’s My Bed installation, he is vexed to discover that a piece of modern art, constructed out of rubbish, has been dropped in the grounds beyond his window. It feels like this is the first time in his life that he has a fundamental and violent emotional response to something – his ire is well and truly fired. That is quite a new sensation, it almost feels like a misstep, a peek into a world of emotional cognisance which is very unfamiliar. His older, more senior friend Val suggests that he should leap into the unknown, leave Peterhouse, and take up the headship of the Brockwell Collection in Dulwich. Val eases his entry into the real world by lending him his house in suburb, which is but a hop and a skip from where he will be working. It seems like a good enough move, lured by the promise of a prize piece of artwork heading for the Brockwell Collection, he is soon ensconced in London.

This is a story of a man who has for most of his life to date preferred the hallowed halls of Cambridge University, rather than embracing the wider world and allowing himself to grow as a person. Literally pushed out into his new job by Val, he is like a man sliding around on an ice rink, away from the rarified atmosphere of Cambridge. His points of reference are skewed, he has little to anchor himself. Until now he has not bothered to engage with everyday life – he has had no real need – but something is stirring within him and he needs to identify what it is.

There are all kinds of awakenings and disappointments for him along the way, cruel understanding of human nature and some fun, a lease of new life. His story is told with poignancy, dark humour, sadness and wit and I really enjoyed the story and the exceptionally good writing. I particularly liked being transported back to Dulwich where I grew up, there were so many familiar elements that I read the book with heightened pleasure. I’ll leave you with the bucolic picture of Dulwich Village:

In the early summer, Dulwich feels different. It is no longer the sedate suburb it was when he [Don] arrived – more an idyllic garden in which the houses and shops are scenic follies. He notices the detail and variety of things: the horse chestnuts bulging with leaves, the picket fences that border the pavements (white as cricket screens), the strips of manicured turf at the roadsides, and the mock-Elizabethan houses with their pastel-pale pebbledash.

Dulwich sounds lovely, doesn’t it? This novel is worth your time.

[Hemmel M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to rate an unfinished novel? I recognized good penmanship and the narration was great. But the story is so depressing I dislike it. The foreboding feeling when following Don's lonely life, manipulated by a villainous character, was too strong for me. Don is a naive idiot and I don't want to know more about his life after listening 50%. I was waiting for the love interest but am afraid that will end depressing, too.

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[Phee · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointed in this. Complete waste of time for me and it seemed pointless by the end.

[Romy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm so confused about this one! I found it really interesting and thought it was super well written, but also had some weird and unnecessary moments? The main character is completely unlikeable which makes it hard to feel invested. I don’t really understand why it’s ’the smart sexy read you need’ when in actuality it was pretty bleak and depressing.

[Thebooktrail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Discover the locations of Tiepolo Blue


A sad novel and a poignant one too. A professor in his forties lives a secluded life so living in the city of Cambridge and working ina college seems apt. He is persuaded to move to London and escape the safety of that world and get a job in an art museum in London. This novel showcases how a place can transform you and give you a new outlook on life but also damage you.

In Cambridge, this man, the only son of elderly parents is lonely and alone. His world is small but safe and he has lived a sheltered life in more ways than one. He ‘s a great professor but not prepared for a life outside of these walls. On moving to London, the man transforms and not always for the better. In fact you could say the man spirals downwards from this moment on.

In London, he discovers the world of Soho and everything that goes with it and starts to question his identity and preferences. He does all of this with the help of his friend and fellow academic Valentine Black who, despite his name, has nothing lovely about him. The transition Don goes through is hard to read and painful at times and so I was grateful for his love of Tiepolo whose art lifted me out of the darker points of the novel.

As for setting, it’s a fascinating mix of worlds where you start in academia and end up in the art world and Soho. Don is an out of touch and rather pompous academic who hasn’t a clue about the real world. I read how he started in Cambridge and ended up in London and Soho at that. A story that was painfully fascinating in so many ways.

Tiepolo is someone I had not heard of but this novel made me google him and discover his work. That was an unexpected joy of this novel. I know little about art but finding out about this enigmatic artist who Don was fixated on, was a definite plus.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edit: I'm a few months wiser now and I think I understand this book better as well because of it. It's about how life is too short and unpredictable to be so anal about what and how art should be. Art, something so human and sincere, shouldn't just hold grounds on what's beautiful and not. It's about what makes us feel, think and what inspires us.
Unfortunately this was something the main character understood all too late.
***
Original: The writing was great, sometimes so good that I felt like I was wearing the skin of the protagonist which I disliked so much.

I'm so conflicted about this book, it's not bad whatsoever but it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be. Especially with such gorgeous cover, interesting concept and great writing. I found that the characters fell flat and the ending... I don't even want to elaborate on the ending.

Lastly, once part II began, I felt like the story started dragging on and so many things were happening at once. Hence my 3 stars, I really did enjoy this book a lot up till a certain point and the ending does not take away from that fact + great writing.

[Mrs Susan J Bociek · Rating 5 out of 5]

From within the soporific world of Cambridge academia events conspire to rouse Don, a Professor of the History of Art, to a new awareness. Insulated by years of repressed feelings both emotional and physical make for a rather uncomfortable transformation.....deftly guided by Val, his long time friend and colleague. Outside of Peterhouse, Don finds a certain clarity, sharp and disturbing, almost overwhelming with possibilities. This is a journey with Don, discovering that after repression, too much freedom can result in an explosion of colour and noise and that even with careful measurement the skies of Tiepolo Blue can come tumbling down. A book to be read at least twice and remebered long after.

[Michael Reffold · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty well written in terms of imagery, metaphor etc and even the dialogue was realistic for the most part, but I didn’t find the characters very interesting and the plot wasn’t that engaging. A lot of detailed description of pieces of art and university/museum politics that didn’t do much for me. The main character is more annoying than anything else. The ending is particularly unnecessary but I guess at least it wasn’t any more ridiculous than the idea that giving a slightly dodgy impassioned speech at a couple of events is enough to ruin the career of an established and respected academic? Don’t think I would hurry to read other books by Cahill.