Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7985 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Observer, 'PAPERBACK OF THE WEEK'
'Both classic and modern, Alan Hollinghurst... imbues human nature and interaction with a timeless, monumental quality'

Sunday Times, 'PICK OF THE WEEK'
'Surveying the era's self-interested mood from the highest social vantage point, Hollinghurst's book is [an] immaculate time capsule.'

Financial Times
Must rank among the funniest [novels] ever written about Thatcher's Britain, while remaining one of the most tragically sad.

Customer Reviews

A massive achievement
Alan Hollinghurst's fourth novel is his most feted, winning the Booker Prize. It is further proof that Hollinghurst is one of our greatest living writers and this novel makes three great works. (I'm afraid "The Spell" didn't do it for me). This is a tale of Tory Britain in the 80s, of wealth, class, greed and excess. Nick Guest lives in London with the family of his Oxford University friend, the Feddens, in a household dominated by the larger than life presence of Gerald, a Tory MP. The beautiful first section charts Nick's relationship with Leo, a working-class black guy who fears his religious mother uncovering his sexuality. The less successful second section sees Nick with Wani, a son of a multi-millionaire whose life is even more closeted than Nick's and Leo's and who leads Nick into an inevitably disastrous would of drugs and cocaine-fuelled sex. The third section moves the story on another couple of years where the shadow of AIDS is looming large and beginning to stalk the gay characters and the "golden era" of the early Thatcher years experienced by most of the characters is beginning to become severely tarnished.
This book is superbly written and impressive. However, I do feel that the enjoyment factor is a little lacking compared to "The Swimming Pool Library", maybe the wealthy classes in London in the mid 80's just threw up too many noxious characters. This does tend to distance the reader, it can be hard to feel sympathetically towards any of them at times, but nevertheless this book is a massive achievement.

On the Outside, Looking In
One of the biggest challenges of any novelist is to provide a perspective that's accessible to us and helpful in understanding what's being portrayed. Alan Hollinghurst has achieved remarkable results by stationing his narrator, Nick Guest, outside of all the worlds he inhabits. Guest is like a spirit rising amused over the action that can draw us a picture while recording every sound that's created or uttered.

Here are the worlds that Guest helps us explore:

-Tory MP life during the Thatcher years
-Young Oxford graduates looking for a place
-A young man exploring his homosexuality
-Wealthy British on the make for more
-Middle-aged married life
-Inner life of a young manic-depressive

The book's overall theme is about everyday hypocrisy and the large price that has to be paid by those who pretend to be other than what they are and believe.

The story evolves in three time periods: 1983, 1986, and 1987. In all three years, Nick Guest resides with the family of an Oxford friend where the father is a rising conservative MP. Nick has an unofficial role as low-cost lodger to keep on eye on the friend's troubled sister. The family knows that Nick is looking for a boy friend and is open about accepting his sexuality. The three years give us a chance to learn more about the characters and to see how their relationships change. The 1987 period brings all that had been known in private into public with large consequences for all.

The book is filled with great scenes where nuances of knowledge, awareness, perception, accent, and perspective separate and unite the characters. Often, contrasting scenes occur back-to-back so that the contrasts are even more obvious. You'll gain a deeper insight into British society than you could on your own.

Ultimately, I feel that a work of fiction must be judged by how successfully it takes you into a world you have never been in before and allows you to understand that world much better. Any novel that can help me understand what it's like to be gay during the AIDS epidemic while giving me a strong sense of Thatcher's leadership has to be pretty terrific because those dimensions are outside my experience and normal reading.

As a person who enjoys art, I was most impressed by the way that the ogee was worked into the story to provide a connecting metaphor for our common humanity.

Bravo!

Stunningly Elegant Prose
At the time of writing I am appalled to see that the review star rating is only 3.5 stars; it is most definitely a 5***** star work of literature.
When I picked up this book and began to read I was already aware of the homosexual theme and I really did not have any high expectations. However I have to say that, for me, this is the finest prose since Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited". Elegant and evocative English, shimmering phrases and a magnetic storyline. Don't miss the chance to read this work of art.