Reader’s Guide with Spoilers for The Blue Hour

My Main Questions Going into The Blue Hour

• What happened to the missing Julian Chapman?
• Whose bone is included in Divison II?
• Did someone destroy Vanessa’s missing paintings and sculptures and if so, who did it?

My Main Question After Reading The Blue Hour and Your Comments

• What happens at the end of The Blue Hour? It’s not clear! If you don’t need the plot summary, that link will take you to the discussion of the ending.

Romantic Drama Introduced

There are two love triangles (maybe one is a rectangle?) in the book:

• James Becker is married to Helena, who was formerly engaged to Sebastian Lennox. James is a working class guy and feels a little insecure about Helena’s past with the wealthy Sebastian. He and Helena began their relationship three days after Douglas Lennox’s death.
• From Vanessa’s diary, we learn that Vanessa knew that her husband Julian was cheating on her with a woman called Celia Gray. Vanessa thinks Julian loves her for her money and is angry that he sold some of her paintings without her consent. BUT it seems like Vanessa also had an affair with Douglas Lennox.
• Vanessa needs a place by the ocean to work, so she buys Eris Island

Is Vanessa a “Silent Patient” kind of character?

• In the present, James Becker gets stuck on Eris Island and has to spend the night reading articles about Vanessa Chapman from the 1990s to the early 2000s
• Vanessa’s husband Julian vanished in 2002 and she NEVER spoke to the press again!
• James begs forgiveness from Grace and gets to come back to the island. Grace shows James Hope is Violent, which she claims is Vanessa’s last painting
• Grace tells James that the last person (a Canadian) who climbed Eris Rock (the island’s highest point) ended up washed up dead on the beach
• Grace offers James a few notebooks of Vanessa’s.

More Grace Revelations

• We learn that Grace was very protective of Vanessa and that they met in 1998 when Vanessa came in for treatment of a broken wrist
• Vanessa says she tripped over the cover of her septic tank and broke the wrist.
• In the present, Grace admits (to herself and the reader) that she lied to James: she saw the Canadian who fell off the rock. She should have warned him!
• Then she pulls out a box of bones.

Back With the Lennox Family:

• We learn that Emmaline Lennox accidentally shot her husband Douglas on a hunting trip.
• The Sunday Times runs an article about Vanessa, including the fact that new Chapman paintings like Hope is Violent have been discovered
• Sebastian insists that there are paintings and ceramics missing
• The Tate Gallery thinks the bone in Chapman’s work IS human
• Emmaline Lennox is furious that the papers Grace gave James included a love letter from Douglas to Vanessa (they had a brief thing, so another love triangle…)

Vanessa and Grace Reveal Some Serious Stuff

• Vanessa’s journal describes her creation of the Division series and also of finding a lump in her breast, a sign of the cancer that will take her life
• Becker also finds Vanessa’s journal entry that describes finding a bone in the woods.
• In addition, he finds evidence that there are missing paintings that have not been given to the Fairburn Institute.
• Vanessa also describes a local handyman trying to assault her and Grace strangling him with wire. They hold him until the police arrive to arrest him.

• Back in 2002, Grace meets Julian for the first time. She and Vanessa fight over the fact that Vanessa keeps going back to Julian despite his horrible behavior.
• Grace finally sees Julian’s sports car drive away and finds Vanessa on the floor with blood on her hands and clothes.

• Back in the present, James and Grace discuss Stuart Cummins, a wife abuser who also attacked Vanessa.
• James finds a photo of Grace from the 80s. She’s pictured with a guy whose face is scratched out. Grace says the guy is named Nick and Vanessa must have defaced the photo.
• Grace tucks the picture away and shows James a box of bone fragments.
• James asks Grace about the missing ceramics.
• Grace suggests that Julian destroyed the art after Vanessa wrote him a break-up note.

• In a flashback, Grace recalls finding Vanessa in the summer of 2002 in her studio, all bloody.
• Grace suggests that Julian destroyed many of Vanessa’s paintings and ceramics, leaving her distraught. As Vanessa tried to salvage the fragments, she cut her hands.
• According to Grace, this happened right before Julian vanished.
• The police come and question Vanessa about Julian’s disappearance.

Grace and James Trade More Confessions

• Grace tells James that Julian destroyed the art. She begs James to drop the issue.
• James tells Grace that his wife Helena was once engaged to Douglas Lennox, Vanessa’s art dealer
• Grace says that she knows that Emmaline Lennox was an excellent shot, and she doesn’t think her husband Douglas’s death was an accident
• Grace admits to James that she helped Vanessa die towards the end of her cancer battle
• Then James receives an emergency message from Helena and leaves abruptly

Grace’s Jealousies Revealed

• Grace is upset when she wakes up and James is gone
• Then Grace recalls another time she felt abandoned: her two roommates Nick and Audrey vanished at a time when Grace was very ill.
• She also recalls finding a letter from Vanessa to her friend Frances. Vanessa said she felt smothered by Grace. A shocked Grace does not mail the letter.

The Bone Drama

• James reads a 2003 letter from Vanessa to Grace asking Grace not to come back to Eris. He takes it, unbeknownst to Grace.
• Sebastian tells James that the bone is human.
• Emmaline tells James she is tired of both him and Vanessa. She says that Vanessa left her art to Douglas just to spite her. She suggests that maybe Helena’s baby was fathered by Sebastian and than James should take Helena and leave

Grace Prepares for Her Final Plan

• Grace reads a new interview with James about Vanessa. The article does not mention Grace.
• Then Grace takes the three paintings that she told James were destroyed by Julian out of her hiding place.
• She gets some of the morphine tablets she’s been saving
• She remembers wishing she could kill Stuart but holding back for Vanessa.
• She messages James to come to Eris next weekend, before a storm is coming.

• James Becker arrives back on Eris Island, a little shaken about Emmaline’s insiuations about Helena and Sebeastian
• Grace accuses James of stealing the letter.
• James in stunned when Grace shows him three of the “lost” paintings: Totem, Grace and Love.
• She admits to lying to James about Julian destroying them. She says the portrait of her (called Grace) is of her strangling Stuart.
• Grace wants to keep them as they were gifts from Vanessa, but James says Sebastian gets everything.
• Grace says she was Vanessa’s totem and protector.

What Really Happened to Julian in 2002?

• Julian showed up again. Grace found a note suggesting that Vanessa invited Julian to the opening night of her show. Furious, she throws his wallet into the sea.
• Then Grace starts smashing Vanessa’s ceramics. When Julian comes back for his wallet and asks what Grace is doing, she hits him with a hammer. Then dumps him in the septic tank.

Ending of The Blue Hour Explained

So two of my major questions are answered:

• What happened to Julian Chapman? Grace killed him.
• Did someone destroy Vanessa’s missing paintings and sculptures? Yes, Grace did. She murdered him and blamed it the missing art on Julian, both to Vanessa and to James.

But there’s one final chilling installment:

• In the present, Grace takes Becker up to the top of Eris Rock. It’s a scary scene and its seems like she might push him off.
• Helena calls James and tells him that someone called the police about Emmaline killing her husband.
• Sebastian also tells James that the bone in Vanessa’s work is of a man in his 20s. So …not Julian.

• In the past, Grace recalls checking Julian’s pulse, putting him in the septic tank and smashing more of Vanessa’s work.
• In the present and back at Grace’s house, James realizes that his car keys are missing and that Grace has unplugged the wifi.
• He calls Sebastian to ask him to have someone bring him a set of keys.
• Grace tells James that the missing man (whose bone is in Vanessa’s work) is her former roommate, Nicholas Riley. He showed up on Eris Island to talk to her.
• Nick twists his ankle and, when Grace won’t help him up, he insults her.
• Grace angrily steps on his hand. He’s furious, and she reaches for him in apology. Nick recoils, and Grace strangles him.

The Final Act

• Grace has to kill James because he saw the photo of Grace with Nick, whom she murdered.
• I also think she kills him so that he won’t tell the Lennox family about the “lost” paintings/
• The bone in Division II, Vanessa’s artwork, is Nick’s. Once the police trace it back to Nick, she’ll be accused of his murder.
• Grace gives James the pills she stashed, puts him in his car, and drives him to the channel in high tide. He’s very groggy as he narrates, but it seems like she leaves him there.
• As the water rises, he thinks he sees blue lights.

Does James Die at the End of the Blue Hour?

• Does James manage to get himself out of the car?
• Are the blue lights he sees emergency vehicles?
• Or is he hallucinating and drowns in the rapidly rising water?

I, an American, did NOT interpret the blue lights as emergency vehicles coming to save James. Where I live, a police car has red and blue lights, while an ambulance has red and white.

The “Blue Hour” is, according to the internet, the period of twilight when the Sun is at a significant depth below the horizon. During this time, the remaining sunlight takes on a mostly blue shade.  Could that be what James saw?

Some readers think the blue lights were signs of James being rescued. It’s possible!

What do you think? Tell us in the comments!

Well, then.

Grace was quite the unreliable narrator, telling multiple versions of how Vanessa’s work got destroyed, multiple versions of the man who died on the island, multiple versions of her relationship with Vanessa, and even multiple versions of Vanessa’s death.

I had a LOT of questions and I’m sure you do too.

My Questions and Yours About The Blue Hour:

If you have a thought, please leave it in comments!

• Did Vanessa know that Grace killed Julian?
• Did Vanessa put Nick’s bone in her work by accident, or because she knew that Grace killed him? (from comments)
• Did James die? Were the blue lights rescue vehicles, or just the lights of the “Blue Hour” that James sees as he dies?

Daphne du Maurier References in The Blue Hour

I’m a duMaurier fan so I’ll put this at the end for those of us who are interested.

• My thoughts went to Rebecca. Do you see Grace as a malevolent Mrs. Danvers? Do you see Vanessa as a mysterious Rebecca?

• But the du Maurier work that’s referenced is called Don’t Look Now. I’d never read this chilling short story. (Don’t Look Now was also made into a 1971 movie.)

So I looked it up and here’s the scoop:

• Don’t Look Now is about a British couple visiting Venice after the tragic death of their young daughter.
• Laura, the wife, runs into two sixty-something sisters, one blind. Laura becomes convinced that the blind sister is psychic and that she can communicate with her lost child.
• Laura and John get a telegram from home: their son has appendicitis. John arranges for Laura to fly home at once, planning to follow her shortly.
• But John is certain he glimpses Laura in Venice with the two sisters when she is supposed to be on her way home.
• As he’s been hearing about a serial killer in Venice, John goes to the police to report his sighting on Laura.
• Laura calls John from home to say that their son is recovering well.
• Meanwhile, the sisters have been taken in for questioning. One of them tells John that he saw Laura with them in the future.
• John then sees a child being chased by a man. He goes to her aid and, to his shock, discovers the the “child” is actually a woman of very short stature. She’s also the serial killer and murders him.

So there are some interesting parallels of an unassuming sixty-something female murderer who kills a man who sees so much and yet notices so little!

I also felt some echoes of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Both books are set in Scotland and both have themes of art and creativity