An exquisite debut novel. A mid-life coming-of-age story charting one man´s sexual awakening and his spectacular fall from grace in 1990s London, raising questions about art and beauty, sex and censure. For fans of Allan Hollinghurst and Edward St Aubyn.
An exquisite debut novel. A mid-life coming-of-age story charting one man´s sexual awakening and his spectacular fall from grace in 1990s London. For fans of Allan Hollinghurst and Edward St Aubyn.
´The best novel I have read for ages. It is so beautifully written, not a false note in any sentence´ Stephen Fry
´Startlingly impressive . . . a heavily perfumed, sexually tender, psychologically acute novel´ Daily Mail
Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian, consumed by his work, but his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of modern art is installed in his college, Don becomes obsessed with it, his anger culminating in a public outburst that results in his expulsion from the university.
Confused and humiliated, he moves to London to take up a role at a museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic art scene and the alluring nightlife of Soho. Over the course of a long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a reckoning, as his oldest friendship and his own unexamined past are revealed to him in a devastating new light.
´Meticulous and atmospheric . . . delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge´ Guardian