Books
by Alan Hollinghurst
|
The Line of Beauty |
Nick Guest is a young gay PhD student staying in the house of an adored friend, whose father is a rich, rising Conservative MP. Through the family he is drawn into a dangerous world of ambition and indulgence. It is a vivid evocation of the 1980s: the politics, family life, cocaine-fuelled parties and the gay scene. Hollingshurst lingers rather too long at Hampstead Ponds for me, but the pace gathers towards a dramatic ending.
*Winner of the 2004 Man Booker prize.
(Victoria Grey-Edwards - bwl 27 December 2004) |
|
|
The Stranger's Child |
Described by one critic as probably the best 2011 novel and with the literati outraged that the Booker ignored it, naively my expectations were high. At its heart: a charismatic WWI poet, the effect he has on those who encounter him and changing attitudes towards homosexuality in the 20C. The passages seen through a child's eye are funny and moving but the huge cast of groping, blushing males and frustrated females left me in a stupor. I gave up.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 63 Winter 2011) |
|
|
