The Violet Hour

A Novel

James Cahill

A stylish, ambitious novel—touching on themes of power, money, and desire—that evokes the art world and all of its moral complexities.

Thomas Haller has achieved the kind of fame that most artists only dream of: shows in London and New York, paintings sold for a fortune. The vision he presents to the world is one of an untouchable genius at the top of his game. It is also a lie.

Between his ruthless new dealer and a property mogul obsessed with his work, the appetite for Thomas and his art is all-consuming. Who is the real Thomas Haller? His oldest friend and former dealer, Lorna, might once have known—before Thomas traded their early intimacy for international fame.

On the eve of his latest show, the luminaries of the art world gather. But the sudden death of a young man has put everyone on edge—and so begins a chain of events that will lead a group of friends back into the past to confront who they have become.

A story of deception, power-play, and longing, The Violet Hour exposes the unsettling underbelly of the art world, asking, who is granted admission to a world that seems to glitter and shimmer, and who is left outside, their faces pressed to the glass?

James Cahill has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and his writing has been published in Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Daily Telegraph. James divides his time between London and Los Angeles.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Early praise for The Violet Hour:

“Cahill allows us a private view of the art world in all its rancid glamor. The artist Thomas Haller—like Wilde's Dorian Gray—has sold his soul. As painters, gallerists and collectors move between New York and the Venice Biennale, auction houses and apartments hung with Mapplethorpes or Picassos, a reckoning is coming. Pulsing with violence and longing, this is a sumptuous, sinister morality tale.” Clare Pollard, author of Delphi

“I stayed up way past my bedtime reading The Violet Hour and it's brilliant. I'm really in awe of the prose, which is so elegant . . . and the human drama of it is just pitch perfect. I'm so glad to have read it. Hypnotic.” Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide

"I'm overwhelmed by the beauty of James Cahill's writing and storytelling. There is such mastery over language and character here, in this disarmingly immersive tale of the infinite potency—and at times the sense of the vacuous futility—of art and the artist.” Santanu Bhattacharya, author of Deviants

“I greatly enjoyed this compelling and beautifully written novel, set in the rarefied world of high-end art, exploring the complex ambiguity and contradictions of contemporary life and personal relationships. I found the author's eye and ear for the nuanced detail of today's art world ritual unusually acute and often unnervingly familiar.” Michael Craig-Martin, emeritus Professor of Fine Art, Goldsmiths

“The international contemporary art market is rich territory for a novelist, and James Cahill mines its excesses and absurdities with precision and panache.” Philip Hook, author of Rogues' Gallery

“A tale told with thunder of an art world smitten with itself and peppered with characters who encapsulate the tremendous accomplishments, delusion and mysteries of art.” Jerry Saltz, New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Artist

“A brilliant reimagining of T. S. Eliot's world of fragmentation and fleeting social encounters, here filtered through the madness of the modern art market. It's a novel of beautifully realized surfaces but also alluring (and sometimes alarming) depths, like a Rothko painting seen in vivid, vital glimpses.” Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of Becoming Dickens

“There's a thriller element that keeps you reading. This is a novel about art and its moral compromises, and The Violet Hour's tutelary spirit is that of Henry James. An enthrallingly intricate novel, with a large cast of characters whose stories and psychological hinterlands are successfully interlinked through the mesh of art, money and desire. Impressive.” Lucasta Miller, The Guardian

“There's something of F. Scott Fitzgerald about the way Cahill writes about the very rich. Cahill writes with an artist's attention to color and detail, but also with an acute awareness of surface glitter.” The Daily Mail

“A biting satire of the art world's glamour, pomp, and greed. Offers a painfully accurate portrait of art dealers and collectors. It becomes clear that, in The Violet Hour, the art world is less a professional network than an arena in which psychosexual dramas might play out. Lucid and evocative.” The Daily Telegraph