57 pages • 1-hour read
The Blue Hour
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Chapter 34-Interstitial 16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, illness, rape, and addiction.
As Becker is driving toward Eris, he receives a message that Helena seemingly sent to him by mistake. In the message, she tells an unknown recipient to come over. Becker wonders if it could be true that Sebastian and Helena are having an affair and if that explains why they frequently encouraged him to visit the island. He arrives on Eris early on Saturday morning; according to Grace, the storm should hit on Sunday night, and he plans to depart by then.
As soon as Becker arrives, Grace confronts him. She accuses him of stealing the letter he took without her permission (the 2003 letter in which Vanessa tells Grace not to come back) and lashes out because he did not mention her in the article profiling the upcoming exhibition. Becker apologizes; Grace relents and explains to Becker how she left the island for a time, beginning about six months after Julian’s disappearance. Before Grace’s departure, Vanessa was acting very erratically and pushing everyone away; Grace alludes to Vanessa feeling a sense of guilt. Vanessa was very cold toward Grace during the time of their separation; eventually, after Vanessa learned that she had cancer, she asked Grace to return. Becker tells Grace that the bone in the statue is human.
Interstitial 15 Summary: “Vanessa Chapman’s Diary”
An entry from Vanessa’s diary describes her feeling a sense of regret about lying to Douglas: She wishes that she had explained that Julian destroyed her artwork and that that is why she abruptly canceled the show. As the end of her life approaches, Vanessa notes her decision to leave her estate to Douglas. She hopes that this will make amends for her earlier decision: “I can’t give him the work I promised him, but I can give him everything I’ve made since” (243).
Chapter 35 Summary
As Becker and Grace enter the cottage, they hear a strange sound. Grace assumes that an intruder has broken in and becomes panicked. Becker investigates and finds that a bird has accidentally become trapped in the house. Grave reveals three paintings that she has hidden in the house.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Eris, 2009”
Grace remembers when Vanessa painted a picture depicting Grace in the act of attacking Vanessa’s assailant. To Grace, this painting symbolizes Vanessa’s love for her and the deep emotional bond between the two of them.
Chapter 37 Summary
Becker is frustrated that Grace has indeed been hiding artwork; he warns her, “[Sebastian] will come after you for these, and for all of Vanessa’s papers, even the private ones” (252). Grace insists that she will never give up the paintings and that she deserves to possess them.
Chapter 38 Summary
Grace storms off to her bedroom. The storm has erupted earlier than Grace predicted; Becker wonders if he will be able to leave the island safely or if he will have to spend the night. Eager to leave as soon as he can, he begins packing the remaining boxes of papers. He can’t find his car keys, which startles him.
Chapter 39 Summary
In her room, Grace watches the storm. She purposefully lied to Becker so that he would be stuck on the island when the storm broke. She also has his keys, which she took from his coat pocket.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Eris, Summer 2002”
The narrative flashes back to 2002. Just before Julian came to the island, Grace and Vanessa were enjoying a period of happiness together. Vanessa showed Grace a portrait she had painted of her. However, this contentment was shattered when Julian arrived. The narrative describes events from Grace’s perspective: At the end of Julian’s visit, Vanessa left, and Grace believed that Julian had also left. She went to the cottage to clean up and found a note in which Julian alluded to the hope that he and Vanessa would continue to be close. Grace was enraged at the ongoing intimacy between Vanessa and Julian and began destroying the artwork in Vanessa’s studio. Julian surprised her while she was doing so.
Julian had returned to the cottage since he forgot his wallet there. When he saw what Grace was doing, he began taunting her. Enraged, Grace struck Julian with a heavy hammer and killed him.
Chapter 41 Summary
In the narrative present, Becker wakes up on Sunday morning at the cottage; the storm has passed, but he still won’t be able to leave for several hours until low tide. He receives messages from Helena, who tells him that Emmeline suffered a heart attack after police came to question her about Douglas’s death: Someone had contacted the police to report Douglas’s death as suspicious. Becker realizes that Grace must have been the one to contact them since he confided to her that Emmeline was the one who shot Douglas. When Becker returns Helena’s call, she tells him that it’s become too difficult for them to live at the Fairburn estate. She wants to discuss moving somewhere else once he returns. Becker also gets a message from Sebastian, explaining that the testing of the bone indicates that it belongs to a man; based on the age range and age of the bone, there is a good chance it could belong to Julian Chapman.
As he prepares to leave, Becker explains to Grace that he is now convinced that the bone belonged to Julian. Grace keeps insisting that this is not true and explains that she knows where Julian’s body is.
Chapter 42 Summary: “Eris, 2002”
Back in 2002, Grace tried to figure out how to hide Julian’s body. She eventually disposed of it in the cottage’s septic tank. Afterward, she destroyed more artwork.
Chapter 43 Summary
In the narrative present, Grace tells Becker that she found Vanessa in her studio covered in blood and that Vanessa had been the one to kill Julian. Grace explains that she covered up the murder by disposing of Julian’s car in a local pond and hiding his body in the septic tank. Becker is confused and no longer knows what to believe. He hesitates to report this story to the police because he doesn’t want Vanessa to be known as a murderer. He is also confused about the origin of the bone: If it doesn’t belong to Julian, that means that there is another man buried in the woods on the island.
Chapter 44 Summary
Grace wonders if Becker will report what she told him about Julian’s death. He is behaving coldly toward her, and “she sees what lies before her” (288).
Chapter 45 Summary
The tide is soon going to make it possible for Becker to leave the island, and he is frantic to leave. However, he still can’t find his car keys. He decides to cross the causeway on foot to get help. He also receives a call from Sebastian, who has surprising news: The bone does not belong to Julian. DNA from the bone is a match for someone named Nick Riley. Upon hearing this news, Becker vomits.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Carrachan, 1993”
The narrative flashes back to 1993. Years after university, Grace was working as a young doctor when Nick (the friend who previously abandoned her) abruptly showed up at her clinic. He had been struggling with drug addiction and moved in with her. One day, Grace suggested that they visit the nearby island of Eris (this was before Vanessa moved there). During their excursion, Nick abruptly announced that he wanted to leave Scotland and no longer wanted to spend time with Grace. She was hurt, and they got into an angry confrontation. Enraged, Grace strangled Nick.
Chapter 47 Summary
Back in the narrative present, Becker is becoming incoherent and barely conscious: Grace reveals that she has been dosing him with morphine. She explains that she didn’t initially think the bone fragment could belong to Nick since she buried the body so many years earlier. Grace now speaks openly to Becker about having killed Julian and Nick. She has no intention of letting him leave the island.
Chapter 48 Summary
An ambiguous and disoriented narrative from Becker’s perspective describes Grace driving his car onto the causeway as the tide is coming in and leaving him there. The implication is that he drowns there.
Interstitial 16 Summary: “Vanessa Chapman’s Diary”
A final diary entry from Vanessa’s perspective describes her feelings as she returns to the island after learning that she is dying from cancer. She is frustrated and angry about her life being cut short, but she also feels a sense of peace and gratitude for the life she has led.
Chapter 34-Interstitial 16 Analysis
Becker’s return to the island marks the turn to the final stretch of the novel, in which Hawkins stretches the tension to its highest point as the conflict builds to a climax. The imagery of the storm contributes to a foreboding mood and uses pathetic fallacy to illustrate the inner turmoil of Grace’s mind. She intentionally lies to Becker about the timing of the storm to trap him on the island, showing a transition from being deceptive but ultimately passive to actively plotting against Becker. Grace is fueled by both a desire for revenge (she felt betrayed when she realized that Becker does not think of her as a friend) and a need to protect her secrets since she has given Becker too much access to information about her past. Grace reveals her mercurial character by abruptly turning on Becker even though she had previously imagined intimacy and affection with him. This abrupt switch is consistent with Grace’s history of violence: She felt deep affection for both Nick Riley and Vanessa but turned on them when they were cruel to her. Grace’s capacity for rage and violence reflects the theme of Public Persona Versus Personal Identity because she seems so unremarkable and benign; in reality, she is capable of inflicting violence.
When Grace and Becker first enter the cottage, they are startled by the noise of a bird that has flown in and become trapped. The bird symbolizes how individuals can become imprisoned by misunderstandings and lies. Grace reacts intensely to the unknown sound: She “is panicking [and] seems terrified” (244). Her overreaction reveals her history of trauma and violence and demonstrates the complexity of her character: While Grace emerges as the killer, she also exists within a world where she has seen many women (particularly Vanessa and Marguerite) living in fear and vulnerability; as a woman, she has absorbed this fear herself as well. Almost all of Grace’s victims (except Vanessa) were men: Nick, Julian, and eventually Becker. When Grace ponders the idea that “kill three, she has heard, and that makes you a serial killer” (301), she inverts the gendered assumption of a male killer who makes women his victims. Grace’s history of violence complicates these gendered assumptions but also exists alongside them: She thinks of herself as someone who acts out of justice, a “protector, she thinks. Mercy killer” (301). Grace’s confusion about whether she is a villain or a hero develops the theme of The Subjective Nature of Truth and Memory because she interprets her actions very differently from other people.
The allusion to the art of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th-century Italian painter, furthers this exploration of how female violence is situated in a context of revenge and potential solidarity. When Becker gazes at the painting that Grace has been concealing, which depicts the moment when she saved Vanessa from being attacked, he is reminded of the painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, depicting “one woman working, the other watching on, the brute dying” (251). An earlier entry from Vanessa’s diary described her admiring this painting during a visit to Naples; Gentileschi, who was notable for the fame she achieved as a woman artist, painted a Biblical story in which a Jewish woman named Judith, accompanied by a female companion, work together to brutally kill an Assyrian general. The painting is widely considered to reflect Gentileschi’s anger after she was raped and endured a highly publicized trial during which she was subject to torture. Within Hawkins’s novel, this allusion reflects Grace’s misguided sense of herself as a heroine enacting justice. She correctly intuits the threat of violence that many women face, but she misrepresents this knowledge to justify her own violent and domineering impulses.
Many of Grace’s secrets emerge in the final stretch of the novel: She was the one who destroyed the art, she was the one who killed Julian and hid his body, and she had previously killed Nick. The reader learns this information slightly before Becker does, which heightens the suspense fueled by dramatic irony: Becker learns the information that might have kept him safe just a little too late. Becker’s fixation on Vanessa distracts him: When Grace initially claims that Vanessa killed Julian, he hesitates because he wants to protect her legacy. Becker is also blinded by his perception of Grace since he continues to perceive her as “a lonely, frightened old woman” (269). Only once he is trapped and drowning does Becker wonder, “[H]ow did it take him so long to see the light?” (306). Becker’s fatal downfall reflects the theme of The Dangers of Ambition since he pays for his aspirations with his life. The ambiguous conclusion is somewhat surprising in that it seems that Becker dies and that Grace presumably gets away with her crimes. The novel’s ending alludes to the title, which references a period either just before dawn or just after dusk: a liminal time of transition and, in Becker’s case, the transition from life to death. The particular lighting during this time is often highly prized by artists and therefore reflects themes of both creativity and death.
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