A PpC BOOKS OF 2022 PICK 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. 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. (P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
