So much blue

‘Absorbing in its simplicity about bourgeois banality and the quest for expression’ New York TimesSo Much Blue is a gorgeous novel about art, memory and self-deception from the author of Erasure, now an Oscar-nominated film. Kevin Pace is working on a painting that he won't allow anyone to see: not his children; not his best friend, Richard; not even his wife, Linda.

The painting is a canvas of twelve feet by twenty-one feet and three inches, covered entirely in shades of blue.

It may be his masterpiece or it may not; he doesn't know, nor does he particularly care. What Kevin does care about are the events of the past: the affair he had with a young artist in Paris ten years ago and, further back, his journey to an El Salvador on the brink of war to retrieve Richard’s drug-dealing brother.

So Much Blue is a brilliant examination of how the past collides with present, and the secrets we keep from even ourselves. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature. ‘So Much Blue is such a perfectly structured novel . . . A generous, thrilling book by a man who might well be America's most under-recognized literary master’ NPR