The Blue Hour, Paula Hawkins, author; Gemma Williams, narrator
This is a great thriller and the narrator is superb. She has captured the nuances of each character’s personality perfectly, and there are many. I have a picture of each one in my mind’s eye. The author has deftly handled this story about the artist Vanessa Chapman and those obsessed with her life, her talent, and her legacy. Ever so slowly, little tidbits about Chapman’s art work are revealed, and there is also the discovery of a possible human bone in one of her sculptures. There are pieces of the collection that were left to the Fairburn Foundation upon Chapman’s death that appear to be missing. The Fairburn Foundation is a charitable trust that was set up by Douglas Lennox, an art dealer that had displayed Vanessa’s work. His son Sebastian is the director of the foundation. His university friend, James Becker, is a Chapman expert, and is its curator.
The mystery revolves around Vanessa’s confidant, Dr. Grace Haswell. She was bequeathed the house and property and is the executor of the will and of all the art work. She has been stalling the delivery of the pieces. She lives in what was Vanessa’s home, and is now hers, on a beautiful tidal island called Eris, in Scotland. It is accessible for only 6 hours a day. Otherwise, the road to it is submerged. What secrets does the water hide? What secrets are hidden on the property? Vanessa spent a great deal of time there with her closest friend and confidant, Grace Haswell. Their relationship was very complicated. It is Becker who has to investigate the missing pieces and deal with the sculpture that might contain a human bone. With the inquiry, he begins a journey that takes him to Eris and many unintended consequences.
As Grace takes Becker into her confidence, he is sympathetic toward her and her love for all things connected to Vanessa. As he learns more and more about her, though, he realizes that his intuition about her being more than an executor of the will, has been quite accurate. Grace seems to know a lot more than she lets on. She reveals secrets about the collection and Vanessa. but she has a loose relationship with the truth. He is unaware of the danger he is in, and naively rushes forward because of his own obsession with Vanessa Chapman which actually began because of his mother’s purchase of one of her paintings.
The novel is complete with mystery, deception, secrets, drugs, ambition, infidelity, domestic abuse, greed, arrogance, depravity, violence, lies, divorce, murder, and also, surprisingly, true love and romance. This book has it all. Why are people disappearing? What has happened to them? All of the characters are of diverse personalities and varied backgrounds, but most of them have a flaw, a dreadful secret or a strong passion that cannot be contained. People go missing and disappear.
Because there are so many characters, I will try to briefly summarize some of them for you. It will help to follow the story. Grace is very homely and lonely. She has been treated cruelly by others because of her appearance. Nick Riley was once a good friend of Grace and another woman, Audrey, but that ended disastrously. Julian Chapman drinks, gambles and has a weak moral compass. He is unfaithful with Celia Gray. He can be cruel, but he loves Vanessa and she finds it hard to give him up. Frances Levy is an artist who is Vanessa’s friend. James Becker is obsessed with learning everything there is to learn about Vanessa Chapman. He cannot believe that Helena Fitzgerald gave up Sebastian to become his wife. She is pregnant. Sebastian is rich, and although sometimes smug, he is kind to Becker in spite of their compromised history. Douglas and Emmeline are the parents of Sebastian. Emmeline despises James Becker because Sebastian and Helena had once been engaged. Marguerite, another person in the town, suffers from dementia. Her husband Stuart Cummins was abusive. This novel has many arms and legs and grows larger as it is explored, but in the end, all of the characters will be connected in some way, and although the reader may have some unanswered questions, they will have had a satisfying experience, especially if they listen to the audio interpretation of the book by Gemma Williams.