Helpful Score: 3
Stunningly skilled, lucid, writing. Hollinghurst takes us deep within a decade, a moment, a conversation. He takes us wherever he wants, in fact. One of the best books I've read recently.
Helpful Score: 3
Great, sad, bitter, lovely. If you like studies of interactions between rich and middle class, or studies of gay life in 80s london (no holds barred), you will like it.
Helpful Score: 2
A hard read - taking me a while to wade through it. Really my life may be too short to finish it
Helpful Score: 1
Big long sad book about poncey British upper crust family and their engaging sycophantic slightly parasitic roomer, aptly named Nick Guest. Narrator Nick befriended son Toby at Oxford, and is invited to come for an extended stay while at the same time being taxed with the responsibility for frail yet maniacally unstable daughter Catherine by the parents: monied Rachel, and ambitious conservative Member of Parliament, Gerald Fedden.
This book chronicles Nick's five years living with(in) the family, and the rise and fall of Gerald Fedden's political career amidst teeming Thatcherism, all against the backdrop of homosexuality and AIDS. Great historical perspective, interesting character development, and despite all this official pomp and overflowing antique finery, still the title A Line Of Beauty seems mostly to refer to cocaine. I liked the repetition of that motif, and also that of the contrasting "vulgar and unsafe," which connoted everything from politics and random fellatio, to the gift of a Mazda sports car.
This book chronicles Nick's five years living with(in) the family, and the rise and fall of Gerald Fedden's political career amidst teeming Thatcherism, all against the backdrop of homosexuality and AIDS. Great historical perspective, interesting character development, and despite all this official pomp and overflowing antique finery, still the title A Line Of Beauty seems mostly to refer to cocaine. I liked the repetition of that motif, and also that of the contrasting "vulgar and unsafe," which connoted everything from politics and random fellatio, to the gift of a Mazda sports car.
From Publishers Weekly
Among its other wonders, this almost perfectly written novel, delineates what's arguably the most coruscating portrait of a plutocracy since Goya painted the Spanish Bourbons. To shade in the nuances of class, Hollingsworth uses plot the way it was meant to be usednot as a line of utility, but as a thematically connected sequence of events that creates its own mini-value system and symbols.The book is divided into three sections, dated 1983, 1986 and 1987. The protagonist, Nick Guest, is a James scholar in the making and a tripper in the fast gay culture of the time. The first section shows Nick moving into the Notting Hill mansion of Gerald Fedden, one of Thatcher's Tory MPs, at the request of the minister's son, Toby, Nick's all-too-straight Oxford crush. Nick becomes Toby's sister Catherine's confidante, securing his place in the house, and loses his virginity spectacularly to Leo, a black council worker. The next section jumps the reader ahead to a more sophisticated Nick. Leo has dropped out of the picture; cocaine, three-ways and another Oxford alum, the sinisterly alluring, wealthy Lebanese Wani Ouradi, have taken his place. Nick is dimly aware of running too many risks with Wani, and becomes accidentally aware that Gerald is running a few, too. Disaster comes in 1987, with a media scandal that engulfs Gerald and then entangles Nick. While Hollinghurst's story has the true feel of Jamesian drama, it is the authorial intelligence illuminating otherwise trivial pieces of story business so as to make them seem alive and mysteriously significant that gives the most pleasure. This is Nick coming home for the first and only time with the closeted Leo: "there were two front doors set side by side in the shallow recess of the porch. Leo applied himself to the right hand one, and it was one of those locks that require tender probings and tuggings, infinitesimal withdrawals, to get the key to turn." This novel has the air of a classic.
Among its other wonders, this almost perfectly written novel, delineates what's arguably the most coruscating portrait of a plutocracy since Goya painted the Spanish Bourbons. To shade in the nuances of class, Hollingsworth uses plot the way it was meant to be usednot as a line of utility, but as a thematically connected sequence of events that creates its own mini-value system and symbols.The book is divided into three sections, dated 1983, 1986 and 1987. The protagonist, Nick Guest, is a James scholar in the making and a tripper in the fast gay culture of the time. The first section shows Nick moving into the Notting Hill mansion of Gerald Fedden, one of Thatcher's Tory MPs, at the request of the minister's son, Toby, Nick's all-too-straight Oxford crush. Nick becomes Toby's sister Catherine's confidante, securing his place in the house, and loses his virginity spectacularly to Leo, a black council worker. The next section jumps the reader ahead to a more sophisticated Nick. Leo has dropped out of the picture; cocaine, three-ways and another Oxford alum, the sinisterly alluring, wealthy Lebanese Wani Ouradi, have taken his place. Nick is dimly aware of running too many risks with Wani, and becomes accidentally aware that Gerald is running a few, too. Disaster comes in 1987, with a media scandal that engulfs Gerald and then entangles Nick. While Hollinghurst's story has the true feel of Jamesian drama, it is the authorial intelligence illuminating otherwise trivial pieces of story business so as to make them seem alive and mysteriously significant that gives the most pleasure. This is Nick coming home for the first and only time with the closeted Leo: "there were two front doors set side by side in the shallow recess of the porch. Leo applied himself to the right hand one, and it was one of those locks that require tender probings and tuggings, infinitesimal withdrawals, to get the key to turn." This novel has the air of a classic.
Very British. Satire, sex, political scandal. Very well-written. Can't say I loved it, but I do admire it!
like it says on the back of the book... class, sex, and money in thatcher's london. how could that not be interesting?
An unusual story, but good book. Slow going at times however.
Exquisite prose, sly satire. Loved it.
This is a Man Booker Prize winner. I couldn't finish it.
I really did not enjoy this book at all. It was a struggle, very dark and not something I would've read o nmy own, it was a book club choice, none of us liked it.
The first few pages of this book are a bit warped - but otherwise the book is in good condition.
