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
