The Violet Hour is also a book of missing children: the baby boy that Thomas and Lorna gave up for adoption, who sits off the page through most of the novel, smoking gently like Chekhov’s gun; and the daughter Leo wishes he and his wife had had.
Lorna once represented the reclusive abstract painter Thomas Haller, whose newest work – all “stuttering brushstrokes and hazes of aerosol” – Leo wants her to acquire for him.
His violet hour.” Thomas overturns no stereotypes of the genius artist, by sleeping with most of the other major characters at various points in the book; despite his being gay, this includes Lorna, with whom he had a child.
The novel asks what desire is: for the powerful Leo, Lorna’s partner suggests, “desire for him is a reflex, like needing to shit.
As this suggests, there’s a lot going on here: as well as all the above, there are subplots including a campaign against Leo when he hits a woman with his car, social media trolling, and a video artist who wants to film Thomas.
