slow start but hard to put down afterwards
|
|
At the start i found this book intensly dull and after a couple of chapters stopped reading it and read another book instead but then after i had finished that book i decided ro give "the folding star" a second chance. after w while i was drawn into the writers world and couldn't bare to be torn from it by the need for sleep. At times i did find it a bit dragged out but overall it is a really good book i would recomend to anyone. I thought the ending was both good and bad at the same time, good because i thought it was a good ending for the book but bad because it wasn't how i wanted the story to end.
|
|
Keep looking!
|
|
After reading The Line of Beauty, I thought I'd read more by this author, and I did. This one is not his best by a long shot. Overly long, uninspired, insipid, meandering, self-referential, its hard to care about what happens to the narrator or anyone else for that matter and in fact, half way through I gave up trying! Perhaps the aim was to produce a slower, more cadenced and lyrical piece than either the Line of Beauty or The Spell, but this really was interminable! Do yourself a favour and read either of the others- they're sharp, intelligent, shrewd and engaging, but whatever it was the author got out of producing this very little of it carries over to the reader!
|
|
|
I may just be nitpicking but....
|
|
"The Folding Star" appeared six years after Hollinghurt's first book "The Swimming Pool Library". It was shortlisted for the Booker prize (he later won it with "The Line of Beauty") and is often on the list of the Greatest Ever Gay novels. It certainly deserves its reputation, it is a superbly written, rich dense novel yet I don't think I enjoyed it as much as his stunning debut book. Edward Manner's obsession with the boy he is tutoring is something I have always found just a little disturbing. I find him more objectionable as a character than I'd like to and the strange thing about this book, which stops me giving it the five stars it probably deserves is that it seems to work better for me when it moves out of its Flemish central location. The writing when Edward follows Luc, the teenager he is obsessed by and a couple of friends on their weekend in France, is just superb, as is the section in England when Edward returns home for a funeral, but the pace at other times in the novel can be a little sluggish. I don't really get any real sense of this Flemish city, and maybe that was the author's intention, but it seems to lack the real sense of place which is evident in "The Swimming Pool Library" and "The Line of Beauty". I do notice, however, that other reviewers have praised this aspect of the book, including a reviewer who has lived in Belgium and feels that Hollinghurst got it just right. Maybe it was differences of opinion like these which prevented it getting The Booker Prize. That said, this book demands to be read.
|
|
A sense of place
|
As a long-term Belgian habitué I'd like to add another comment to the perceptive reviews of this superb novel, its profound sense of place. More than Hollinghurst's other novels, THE FOLDING STAR brilliantly evokes its locale, an anonymous Flemish city which is in fact an often uncanny amalgam of Brugge and Gent. It also evokes the strange multi-cultural aspects of the city and country, the distinctive quality of life in well-to-do Belgian homes and schools, and an almost eerie characterisation of Belgian teenage life.
More than any native novel which I know this book encapsulates the quality of lowland Belgium in the 1980s. It is far more than a 'gay' novel.
|
|
|
A modern classic
|
|
I bought this book about six or seven years ago and the best thing I can say to recommend it is that I've re-read it every couple of years ever since and hugely enjoyed it every time. It's a great book to curl up with on a damp, rainy, Autumn weekend. Despite the gay plot, it's a universal tale of unrequited love and haunting obsession and will be of equal interest to gay or straight readers; it's not really a "gay novel" and if that would put you off reading it, don't let it. Quite possibly Hollinghurst's best work: it's longer and more substantial than The Swimming Pool Library; it's a far better book than The Line of Beauty. Unlike a lot of pointless, shallow, modern English fiction, this book has the rich, dense feel of a classic.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada