The Blue Hour

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

“How can he—fatherless bastard of a supermarket check-out girl, state-school boy in a cheap suit—be living and working here, at Fairburn, among the bluebloods?”

This quotation reflects Becker’s sense of unease and self-doubt at the start of the novel. He comes from a very different social position than Sebastian and Helena (whom he characterizes as “bluebloods,” a term meaning a person of noble birth), and he is self-conscious about his lower-class origins. The quotation shows that, despite the success he has achieved, Becker still sees himself as an outsider and someone who does not fully belong. This lack of belonging makes him anxious to prove himself, foreshadowing The Dangers of Ambition.

“All the years on Eris Island—more than twenty of them now—have made Grace tidal. A lunatic. An actual lunatic! Governed by the moon.”

This quotation introduces Grace and her isolated life on Eris. The quotation puns on the word “lunatic” since the etymology of this word relates to the Latin word luna, or “moon.” Individuals who displayed strange behavior were sometimes believed to be responding to the waxing and waning of the moon. The joke refers to how, living in isolation, Grace has become subject to the rhythms of nature rather than the constructed social world. It also darkly foreshadows Grace’s capacity for violence.

“Why is it, he rushes on, trying to move the discussion to safer ground, that we are so interested in the private lives of artists?”

This quotation occurs during a radio documentary that Becker is listening to as he drives to Eris for the first time. The topic of the documentary is the novelist