Italy in the early 1960s: a dying painter considers the sacrifices and losses that have made him an enigma, both to strangers and those closest to him. He begins his last life painting, using the same objects he has painted obsessively for his entire career - a small group of bottles.
In Cumbria 30 years later, a landscape artist - and admirer of the Italian recluse - finds himself trapped in the extreme terrain that has made him famous.
And in present-day London, his daughter, an art curator struggling with the sudden loss of her twin brother while trying to curate an exhibition about the lives of the twentieth-century European masters, is drawn into a world of darkness and sexual abandon.
Covering half a century, this is a luminous and searching novel, and Hall's most accomplished work to date.
- ISBN10 057122489X
- ISBN13 9780571224890
- Publish Date 4 June 2009 (first published 31 May 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 11 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Faber & Faber
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 304
- Language English