Book Review: The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins became a household name nearly 10 years ago when her novel The Girl on the Train became a smash hit. While her subsequent efforts haven’t enjoyed quite the same level of success, she’s still remained a reliably popular writer of moody mysteries. Her latest, The Blue Hour, is a slow-burning and cerebral examination of art, legacy, and obsession that, while not perfect, should keep her fans happy and possibly earn her some new ones.

After her death from cancer, artist Vanessa Chapman left her small home on an isolated island to her friend Grace and bequeathed all of her work to the Fairburn House foundation, where it is now exhibited and researched. James Becker is Fairburn’s resident expert on Chapman, quite literally as he also lives with his wife Helena in the estate’s Gamekeeper’s Lodge. One morning he receives a call from the Tate Modern art museum which has some of their collection on loan. It has been discovered that in the found object sculpture Division II, what was thought to be a rib bone from a deer may actually be human in origin.

Becker informs his boss and the heir to the property, Sebastian Lennox, about the news and is surprised to find him pleased about it, thinking it might juice their attendance numbers. His wife and Sebastian, themselves former lovers, suggest that he travel out to Eris Island to visit Grace, see if she can impart any information about the bone, and perhaps remind her that she still owes Fairburn a variety of Chapman’s pieces and documents. While initially cooperative, Grace had since grown hostile towards Fairburn, likely due to Vanessa’s tricky past with Sebastian’s father, and is very likely withholding material from them. Becker agrees to go, having long been curious to meet Grace and see the island in person, thinking that he can take a kinder touch with her and stabilize her relationship with his employer.

When he arrives, Grace is unsurprisingly standoffish, but she does see something in him that softens her stance and so she agrees to talk, filling Becker in on details about Vanessa’s life, including her contentious, on-again / off-again relationship with her husband Julian, who went missing two decades prior and who certainly sounds like a strong candidate to be the originator of the mysterious human bone in her sculpture. James also takes a liking to Grace, finding her to be sad and lonely rather than hostile as he was led to believe, though as he learns more about her and her life, he does begin to wonder if her version of events can be entirely trusted.

The set up of The Blue Hour is genius, and immediately hooks the reader. Eris Island where Chapman set up residence isn’t technically an island, as there is actually a slender strip of land that connects it to the mainland, but due to the tides it is untraversable for 12 hours every day, effectively trapping its inhabitants for 6 hours at a time.

The majority of the time we follow Becker, who seems to have some secrets of his own, as he tries to piece together everything he can about his favorite artist’s life and figure out the provenance of the mysterious bone. But we also get excerpts from Vanessa’s diaries and flashbacks to Grace’s past as Hawkins expertly puts the puzzle pieces together, leading us to the dark truth of just what took place on Eris Island over the years.

Hawkins’ writing is elegant and she intelligently discusses ideas about what artists put into their creations, what we all leave behind, gender bias, and the possible dangers of infatuation. The ending does offer up answers to all of the novel’s mysteries, but still feels a bit abrupt and vague, to the point that I was wondering if another chapter might have been missing. However, that isn’t enough to ruin what is otherwise a highly engaging and satisfying story. Once The Blue Hour gets its hooks in you it’s hard to put down, so make sure to clear some time on your calendar! ★★★★