57 pages • 1-hour read
The Blue Hour
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Chapter 22-Interstitial 14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: “Eris, Summer, 2002”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, illness, and suicidal ideation.
The narrative flashes back to the summer of 2002 when Julian abruptly arrived on Eris. Grace was unhappy to see Vanessa’s estranged husband: She felt that his presence was distracting to Vanessa, and it made her jealous to see the sexual chemistry between the couple. Grace expressed her dislike of Julian to Vanessa, but Vanessa rationalized her ongoing attachment to him. Vanessa left the island for a few days; Julian lingered but was supposed to depart before her return. On the day that Vanessa was scheduled to come back to Eris, Grace went to her cottage to meet her. When Grace arrived, she found Vanessa, alone, with blood all over her.
Chapter 23 Summary
In the narrative present, Becker arrives on the island; he mentions to Grace that he read the diary entry about Grace rescuing Vanessa when she was attacked. Grace explains that the attacker was a local man named Stuart Cummins; he was the husband of Marguerite (the woman with Alzheimer’s) and was abusive toward her. After the attack, Stuart left the island, but Marguerite still lives there. Grace also explains that after the attack, she began living in the cottage full-time with Vanessa. While Grace is showing Becker the studio, she shows him a photo of her with a man named Nick Riley; Grace explains that she and Nick were good friends when they were young. Nick’s face has been scratched out of the photo, and Grace says that Vanessa was jealous: “[S]he could be quite funny about things sometimes. Quite possessive” (162).
Becker asks Grace about the ceramics and paintings listed in Vanessa’s notebook; she evades the question at first. When Becker presses, Grace explains that the last time Julian visited the island, Vanessa had many artworks ready in preparation for her forthcoming show at the Douglas Lennox gallery. Vanessa left the island on Thursday, instructing Julian to be gone by the time she returned. According to Grace, when Vanessa returned on Sunday, many of her artworks had been destroyed.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Eris, Summer 2002”
The narrative flashes back to Grace finding Vanessa covered in blood. Many of Vanessa’s art pieces had been destroyed, and she couldn’t answer Grace’s questions about where Julian was. A week passed with Vanessa in a state of shock and depression, and then the police came to the island. They wanted to question Vanessa since Julian had gone missing and was last seen on the island. Vanessa explained that she hadn’t seen Julian since she left: He was gone when she returned. However, Grace was surprised that Vanessa didn’t tell anyone about Julian having destroyed her artwork. Vanessa explained to Grace, “[I]f I tell them what he did, they’ll think I did something to him” (175). Although the police asked many questions and searched the house, studio, and surrounding area, they couldn’t find anything. The police never found any trace of Julian or his car.
Chapter 25 Summary
In the present-day narrative, Becker is astonished to learn that so many of Vanessa’s pieces were destroyed. This also explains why she mysteriously pulled out of the show at the last minute (triggering Douglas’s rage and the quarrel between them). Grace pleads with Becker not to share this information with anyone. Becker begins talking about his relationship with Helena and the Lennox family and accidentally confides that Emmeline was the one responsible for shooting Douglas. He is shocked when Grace seems to interpret this as Emmeline having intentionally shot her husband. Grace shows him the notebooks that Vanessa kept while she had cancer but asks Becker not to publicly display them. Grace admits that, at Vanessa’s urging, she helped her to die, and the notebooks allude to this. Grace isn’t worried about herself, but she wants to honor Vanessa’s wish for privacy and avoid having the details of her death made public.
In the middle of the night, Becker receives a call from Helena: She is bleeding and afraid that she may be losing the pregnancy. Becker frantically rushes out of the cottage; in his haste, he impulsively grabs a random letter from the papers that Grace was showing him.
Chapter 26 Summary
Grace wakes up the next morning; she believes that she and Becker have formed an emotional connection and a bond. When she finds the note that Becker had to leave in the middle of the night, she feels hurt and angry.
Chapter 27 Summary: “London, 1981”
The narrative flashes back to Grace’s days as a student. She became friends with a boy named Nick Riley after he stood up for her, and she also became close with one of Nick’s other friends, a girl named Audrey. The three of them moved in together, but one day, Nick and Audrey abruptly vanished without explanation. Grace was devastated by this loss and betrayal: She isolated herself and never fully trusted anyone again.
Chapter 28 Summary
In the present, Grace goes to see Marguerite; she reflects on the many years in which she has known the woman. These memories also spark a reference to Nick Riley having turned up at Grace’s workplace sometime around 1992.
Interstitial 13 Summary: “Vanessa Chapman’s Diary”
An entry from Vanessa’s diary describes her isolation and loneliness.
Chapter 29 Summary
Grace reflects on how she has been haunted by a feeling of loneliness and abandonment throughout her life. She thinks about how she initially planned to die by suicide after Vanessa died but eventually found solace in returning to her work as a doctor. Grace looks through Vanessa’s papers: There is a letter that Vanessa wrote to one of her friends, in which Vanessa expressed that Grace could not truly understand her. Vanessa never received an answer to this letter, which led to a falling out with the friend. However, Grace took the letter, ensuring that it would not be answered. She wanted to drive a wedge between Vanessa and anyone else with which Vanessa was close.
Chapter 30 Summary
Becker arrives home and reunites with Helena; she has recovered and has not lost the pregnancy. He eventually reads the letter he took from the cottage; it is a letter from Vanessa to Grace, dated 2003. In the letter, Vanessa states that she does not want Grace to return to Eris and says, “[Y]ou know things you shouldn’t. I’m not sure how to be around you again” (213). Meanwhile, the bone extracted from the sculpture has been confirmed to be human and is now being tested. Sebastian and Becker discuss what could happen if the bone is a match for Julian. They are worried that Grace will panic and potentially destroy important documents. Becker plans to go back to Eris for more documents as soon as possible.
Becker unexpectedly runs into Emmeline late at night while both of them are gazing at some of the Chapman paintings on display. Emmeline expresses her hatred for Vanessa and asks Becker to quit his job once the negotiations with Grace conclude. Emmeline hopes that if Becker quits and leaves the estate, Sebastian will lose interest in Vanessa and her art: “[W]ithout you, the Chapman expert, Sebastian will lose interest in all this” (218). Emmeline also implies that Sebastian and Helena are having an affair and that Helena’s pregnancy may be a result. Becker refuses to let Emmeline intimidate her and tells her that he is not going to quit.
Chapter 31 Summary
Grace is growing increasingly distressed and disoriented. She reads an article about the upcoming exhibition of Vanessa’s art and is crushed when there is no mention of her or her role in helping Becker better understand Vanessa and her art. Grace seems to be preparing to die by suicide: She has a vial of morphine that she kept after the period of Vanessa’s illness.
Chapter 32 Summary
Grace flashes back to painful memories. She remembers her difficulty restraining her desire to hurt or kill Vanessa’s attacker; she also thinks about the period after Julian’s disappearance when Vanessa often said cruel things and lashed out at her. Vanessa was also harsh with Grace during the end of her life, and Grace wonders if her killing Vanessa was truly to stop her suffering or was in part revenge for the way that Vanessa treated her.
Chapter 33 Summary
The next morning, Grace hears from Becker that he wants to return to the island. She agrees and specifies a date that seemingly means that he will avoid a forecasted storm.
Interstitial 14 Summary: “Vanessa Chapman’s Diary”
An entry from Vanessa’s diary comments on the gendered expectation that women will not be implicated in violence or anger.
Chapter 22-Interstitial 14 Analysis
As Grace and Becker spend more time together, Grace believes that an emotional bond has formed between them. She thinks to herself, “[T]hey’ve bonded, they are friends now. She can trust him. They can trust each other” (191). Ironically, Grace’s sense of trust and intimacy with Becker raises the stakes of the danger: The more she tells him, the more reason she will eventually have to decide that he must die. While Grace genuinely does reveal things to Becker, she also misleads him into thinking that he has access to the truth while deliberately shaping his interpretation. Grace’s ongoing manipulation develops the theme of The Subjective Nature of Truth and Memory. Notably, Grace leads Becker to believe that Julian destroyed the art that Vanessa had painstakingly prepared for her solo exhibition (the narrative will later reveal that Grace did so herself).
Hawkins presents the incident in which Grace found a bloodstained Vanessa standing in the wreckage of her studio, surrounded by “all the ceramics [that] had been smashed, the canvases slashed. Everything destroyed” (169), as a visceral scene of violence. The incident functions as a surrogate for the discovery of a crime scene and is almost as traumatic as if Vanessa had been discovered with a body. Grace briefly states what she witnessed to Becker, and then Chapter 24 recounts the episode from Grace’s point of view through a narrative flashback set in 2002. Both of these narrative structures combine to convince the reader, along with Becker, that Grace is finally accurately revealing one of the central mysteries.
However, Grace does disclose one long-held secret. The reason why Vanessa abruptly canceled her exhibition and created an enduring feud with Douglas was that her artwork had been destroyed. Grace cleverly conceals her secret by seemingly disclosing and misdirecting. The narrative that she presents strongly implies that Julian destroyed Vanessa’s art: This is also the narrative that Vanessa believed. The act of violence perpetuated against Vanessa’s art parallels the previous attack on her physical body: It makes sense that a man would want to exert power and control over Vanessa by jeopardizing her career and asserting dominance over her creativity (a key source of freedom and autonomy for her). The destruction of Vanessa’s art reflects the theme of The Dangers of Ambition; because Vanessa’s creativity was so intertwined with her sense of self, an assault on her art was almost indistinguishable from a physical attack.
Once Grace has seemingly made this disclosure, Becker becomes especially vulnerable because he thinks he knows the truth. Becker confides insecurities about Helena and Sebastian and discloses the closely guarded secret that Emmeline was the one who shot Douglas. Grace, in turn, confides that she helped Vanessa die. Through their revelations, Hawkins further develops the theme of Public Persona Versus Personal Identity. However, what seems like intimacy between the two of them only sets the stage for Grace to feel betrayed: When Becker abruptly leaves the island in the middle of the night, Grace has an intense emotional reaction: “[S]he hates him. The coffee pot hits the wall with a crack like a gunshot” (192). The simile comparing Grace throwing the coffee pot to a gunshot highlights her potential capacity for violence and foreshadows the way she will subsequently harm Becker. Ironically, the act that Grace perceives as a betrayal and that prompts her rage is quite benign: Becker rushes back to Helena because she fears that she is having a miscarriage. Grace’s disproportionate reaction reveals both the degree to which she overestimated their connection and her inability to understand that other people have connections beyond their relationship to her.
Becker’s abrupt departure triggers Grace’s rage and sets the stage for violence as she begins spiraling through previous painful incidents. Grace becomes keenly aware of her isolation, loneliness, and increasing irrelevance to the wider world, fixating on how “she will be forgotten. She has already been forgotten” (227). Grace has lived much of her life in Vanessa’s shadow, as someone who was never famous, beautiful, or charismatic. Her utter panic at being completely discarded and abandoned reflects cultural stereotypes of aging women, especially women without partners and children. Grace’s only sense of legacy was her connection to Vanessa’s fame, and this became sublimated in her attachment to Becker: When Grace first begins reading the article that later distresses her, she is “filled with a facsimile of maternal pride” (225). The belief that Becker has rejected and abandoned her is particularly devastating to Grace because she believes that she will not have any more chances to find a connection.
It is not immediately clear what Grace’s plans are when she agrees to Becker returning to the island and stipulates a specific date. Nonetheless, the novel’s mood turns suspenseful and foreboding: The threat of the impending storm functions as a form of pathetic fallacy (when the environment or external world mirrors the inner emotional state of a character). An excerpt from Vanessa’s diary also menacingly connects female agency to a potential capacity for violence. She begins by arguing, “[W]omen aren’t supposed to look, are they? They’re supposed to be looked at […] they’re not supposed to make of horror something of their own” (234). Vanessa and Grace have both lived lives that have largely defied gendered expectations: Vanessa established success in the male-dominated field of contemporary art, lived independently, and freely pursued sexual gratification. Grace, by contrast, lived alone, without a partner or children. While still defying societal expectations placed upon women, her defiance exposes her to loneliness and becomes warped; the building sense that she is going to defy expectations of femininity through violent functions as a source of dread rather than empowerment.
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