WAS IT WORTH THE HYPE?
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The first Hollinghusrts book I read was "the folding star" and I thought it was a very good book, full of great characters and unforseen twists and turns and on that level i wasn't disappointed when i came to the much hyped "the swimming-pool library".
Just like "The folding star" Hollinghurst's debut novel is packed with original characters from the eccentric Lord Nantwich and his string of colourful butlers, the main character the Hon Charles Beckwith who stumbles from boy to boy and club to club and Charles's hilarious young nephew Rupert.
The book tells two stories, through Charles himself and through the diarys of Lord Nantwich that he reads. The diarys span decades and recount his experiences of such far off places as Africa and back to London introducing us to a variety of eccentric characters.
Overall I give this book four stars because allthough the story is great it does drag in places and all the "darling" and "dear" does get rather tedious.
As I said earlier having read both "The swimming-pool library" and "The folding star" it seems that with each book Alan Hollinghurst gets better.
I will be ordering his next book "The spell" soon and look forward to reviewing it.
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Brilliant though not his finest
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Like all books written by Mr. Hollinghurst, this was written eloquently and beautifully. Fascinating insight into the gay world of the 80s and perhaps even earlier in the century in England as the protagonist, Will, a young, rich, careless and privileged aristocrat was drawn into the world of the dying Lord Charles Nantwich. Like The Line of Beauty, the story started off focusing on the protagonist's hopeful lives and a tragic event revealed itself at the very, very end showing that the story is after all, a dark one.
I absolutely adore this book and upon completing it, it made me realise, generally, as interesting as us queers may be, we are also very dangerous creatures and essentially, we are not very nice people. This book shows perfectly how self-obsessed we all are, perhaps because we are not breeders and our energies are bound to focus on ourselves. (Obviously this is my opinion and it is a generalisation.)
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Twenty years on this is still superb!
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I read this book twenty years ago when it first came out. Although I remember loving it, I've always had it linked in my head with a strange experience I had with finding some letters belonging to an elderly vicar in a library copy (it's a long story, and given the themes of the book oddly appropriate and the vicar proved to be quite hard to shake off!)so although I've read and really enjoyed other Hollinghurst books (didn't go a great deal on "The Spell")I've never gone back to this one. Until now. I thought the twenty years might have dulled its appeal, but it is an outstanding novel. It probably was one of the first UK books to have gay life as a central theme within a literary framework and it still has the power to draw the reader in, to shock, to surprise and to entertain. And it is so well written. I thought because I'm now twenty years older the slightly old-fashioned class and race aspects might leave me cold, but they didn't. It's an incredibly intense and rich novel, which repays re-reading (even if you leave it 20 years like I did). It is remarkably honest and sexy. I'm going to re-read the other Hollinghurst novels - because here I think we may have one of our greatest living authors- I might even give "The Spell" another try.
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just brilliant!
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Wow. This is a literary but very erotic book which takes for its subject a hidden English sexual subculture which doesn't often register in mainstream life. I would recommend it to people of all sexualities.
The main focus is on metropolitan gay life in the early 1980s, before AIDS, and the novel's protagonist William Beckwith is suitably hedonistic and frequently debauched. He's not always likeable but the sensuous and sensual character of Hollinghurst's prose keeps you reading as you enter seedy flats, exclusive gentlemen's clubs and darkened caverns.
Hollinghurst's graceful, elegant prose is the work of a mind which has digested a library-load of English prose. Despite its forays into underground porn cinemas and gay cottaging, this is a book which is deeply aware of tradition and the relationship between history and the present; the dead haunt every page.
Highly recommended.
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Tedium
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Like one of the other reviewers, I too just couldn't get into this book and gave up just over half way through. I got incredibly bored with the excerpts from Charles' diary; tedium in the extreme!
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