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The Line Of Beauty
In the summer of 1983, 20-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Tory MP Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby - whom Nick had idolized at Oxford - and Catherine, always standing at a critical angle to the family and its assumptions and ambitions.
As the Thatcher boom-years unfold, Nick, an innocent i
...moreHardcover
Published
by Picador USA
(first published 2004)
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Jessica
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who like old-timey british novels about rich people, but want more gay sex
Recommended to Jessica by:
my ex-professor who i amazon-stalk; eric-with-the-drink
I started this last night, heading home after one of the most dreadful evenings in recent memory.
So lately my life does seem like a pot of thick, scalding acrid coffee; I read books in the hope that they'll help me choke it down. But for some reason everything I pick up lately's been unsatisfying, like skim milk or soy. It might take the edge off, but not nicely, and with some of this stuff I think I might be better off drinking the coffee black. That Martin Amis is like some synthet...more
So lately my life does seem like a pot of thick, scalding acrid coffee; I read books in the hope that they'll help me choke it down. But for some reason everything I pick up lately's been unsatisfying, like skim milk or soy. It might take the edge off, but not nicely, and with some of this stuff I think I might be better off drinking the coffee black. That Martin Amis is like some synthet...more
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K.D.
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review of another edition
Recommended to K.D. by:
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2008-2010)
Alan Hollinghurst’s prose is simply beautiful. His words make made me breathless even if his milieu is something that I am not very familiar with: London in the eighties. His prose is so beautiful that I felt that I would never be able to write a novel myself. Hollinghurst is like a god in the Olympus and I am just a mortal slave and I am not even worthy to kiss the ground he steps on. It is so beautiful, I felt like putting it at the altar stare at pray that it would inspire me to continue writ...more
An unusually powerful and deserving winner of the Man Book Prize, this is one of the few books that took me over a year to read, not because it was ever boring or sluggish, but because each sentence was so beautiful, I wanted to give every passage its due attention. I rarely say such things about books, so Hollinghurst must be a magician or a hypnotist. As it took me so long to read, I spent an embarrassing amount of time repeating to people who asked me what I was reading that it was Line of ...more
I'd been meaning to look into Hollinghurst for years, ever since I read a rave review of The Swimming Pool Library... by a writer whose opinion I respected but whom I can't remember now. Martin Amis, maybe? I want to say John Updike, but given the controversy over his New Yorker review of Hollinghurst's later The Spell, I'm not sure I could handle the irony.
In any case, I always look for Swimming Pool Library in book stores, but they never seem to carry it. So finally I got this inste...more
In any case, I always look for Swimming Pool Library in book stores, but they never seem to carry it. So finally I got this inste...more
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AWARD WINNING CAST REUNITED FOR 'THE LINE OF BEAUTY' ADAPTATION.
(HOLLYWOOD, Nov 25, 2007)
Academy Award winning producer Alan Ball announced today that he has reunited most of the cast of Six Feet Under for an HBO production of the award-winning English novel, "The Line of Beauty."
The 12 episode mini-series will tell the story of Nick Guest ("David Fisher"), a young homosexual who has managed to con his wa...more
AWARD WINNING CAST REUNITED FOR 'THE LINE OF BEAUTY' ADAPTATION.
(HOLLYWOOD, Nov 25, 2007)
Academy Award winning producer Alan Ball announced today that he has reunited most of the cast of Six Feet Under for an HBO production of the award-winning English novel, "The Line of Beauty."
The 12 episode mini-series will tell the story of Nick Guest ("David Fisher"), a young homosexual who has managed to con his wa...more
Dustin
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
young homos and the people that love them
It's been a while (and by a while, I don't mean a certain number of months, but a certain number of a certain kind of months) since I read this book. But I wanted to say at least this:
The Line of Beauty contains some of the most beautiful passages in fiction I've read in, well, my life. The book is rich, thick and overflowing. Meanwhile things come across well-placed, timed, pertinent.
It's gay fiction for gays who love reading (and not just for gays who love reading about...more
The Line of Beauty contains some of the most beautiful passages in fiction I've read in, well, my life. The book is rich, thick and overflowing. Meanwhile things come across well-placed, timed, pertinent.
It's gay fiction for gays who love reading (and not just for gays who love reading about...more
Read this book to appreciate the writer's unparalleled mastery of the language and an enviable genius that he possesses at getting across his fiery dazzling display of ideas. His expression is exceedingly rich, thick and creamy like a sizeable chunk of delectable chocolate cake that you shovel into your mouth and allow it to tease and tantalise those tastebuds before it iniquitously melts away into the obcurity of your mouth leaving you quarter-miffed and three-quarters craving more.
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Be Forewarned. This well-written society critique and winner of the 2004 Man Booker prize will bore the pants off you unless you are deeply interested in class struggle, gayness, politics, ethnicity, and AIDs, (the intersection of) in England in the mid-to-late 80s. Oh, and antiques. Talk about a niche!
It was one of two books I brought on my 20 hour flight to Singapore, where I was planning on enjoying, at long last, some time to myself to read. About 50 pages into it, my mind cried,...more
It was one of two books I brought on my 20 hour flight to Singapore, where I was planning on enjoying, at long last, some time to myself to read. About 50 pages into it, my mind cried,...more
I enjoyed this enormously. Hollinghurst is a great stylist and his debt to Henry James, suggested throughout (the protagonist is writing a thesis on 'The Master'), is always evident. Best of all is his subtle but uncompromising social satire: few of the characteres are particularly sympathetic but all are energetically realised and very believable. There are some terrific set-pieces: an aristocratic twenty-first birthday, awkward introductions of gay lovers to parents who don't know (or won't ad...more
All that sex is, frankly, exhausting and never quite satisfying to either character or reader.
The gay Great Gatsby in Thacher's England. Also, the best book I've read in years.
The preemptive assumption of this novel is that Nick is an innocent in the ways of the world--in regards to politics, finance, and romance. The author sets up this character to be seemingly sterotypically innocent describing that everything in life comes to him as a shock. Throughout the book you see that, although Nick is innocent to the "evils" that lurk behind the corporate power structure and elite of society, and never quite knows the proper thing to say, neither does anyone else....more
Excellent in every respect. Reading this, I often felt to be in masterly hands: Hollinghurst has that completeness of play, that perfect union of the dramatic and the psychological. He does the scenic work of artfully describing characters' interplay of gestures and tones and tics, but is just as adept amidst the impalpables of sensibility, where the motives for their gestures and tones and tics are found to lie. Hollinghurst has superb senses for texture, heft, sound, movement. The old James a...more
Finally finished... the plot started to pick up -or rather, the author found the plot- in the last third of the book or so, but that was 300+ pages in. Painful.
The writing was supposed to by lyrical and graceful, but it was just long-winded and poorly executed. For beautiful prose, this book tries but does not hit the mark. The author needed a better editor, one who loves the delete key. It may be because I have been reading this book sporadically over the past year or more, but at ...more
The writing was supposed to by lyrical and graceful, but it was just long-winded and poorly executed. For beautiful prose, this book tries but does not hit the mark. The author needed a better editor, one who loves the delete key. It may be because I have been reading this book sporadically over the past year or more, but at ...more
This book won the Booker Prize two years ago, and I do have a tendency to read Booker books and enjoy them. However a book like this (see also: Gilead) reminds me that just because it won an award, I don’t always enjoy it. Like with movies, I am sort of a book snot. I admit that. There are just too many good ones out there and not that many hours in a day. So I don’t like wasting my time. I also usually finish movies that I am not enjoying, and finish books I don’t really like. There were some p...more
The Line of Beauty is the first novel focused on gay life to win the Booker Prize, yet it does more than glance back at the sometimes frivolous and deadly aspects of London's gay culture. Hollinghurst, acknowledged as one of his generation's best writers, is an incisive social and political satirist. With a sly wit, he confirms stereotypes about class, family, society, politics, and sexuality in _80s-era London__just like Henry James did for late nineteenth-century New York and European society
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This is the first Alan Hollinghurst I've read, having picked it up as a recommendation, probably because of the Booker Prize link. I will go on to read more - his style so elegant and economical, it did not surprise me when I later learned that he is also a poet and a close friend of Andrew Motion; the poetry beats through the prose.
We experience everything through the eyes and thoughts of the central character Nick Guest. His surname is appropriate in that throughout the four-year ti...more
We experience everything through the eyes and thoughts of the central character Nick Guest. His surname is appropriate in that throughout the four-year ti...more
When I told a friend it took me reading more than 200 pages of this book to decide whether it was worth finishing, she thanked me for saving her the trouble. But as my 4-star rating reveals, I found it well worth the commitment by the end, by which point I felt as if I had a real sense of the protagonist as a man as well as the context of the novel.
Set in 1980s London, the story spans 4 years in the life of a young man, Nick Guest, who has recently graduated from Oxford and is now l...more
Set in 1980s London, the story spans 4 years in the life of a young man, Nick Guest, who has recently graduated from Oxford and is now l...more
I will always read the Booker winner. I love the Booker. I follow it closely and always have since I started paying attention to the world of literature. I have read the last ten winners and a few of the earlier ones as well. One of my all time favourite books was also judged the Booker of Bookers (that is the best book to have won the Booker in its first 25 years) in 1993; “Midnight’s Children” by the incomparable Salman Rushdie. This proves that not only was the Booker right on the mark in 198...more
A beautifully written, ironic novel in the tradition of Forster and Waugh? Sign me up. Then imagine that they didn't have repressed/symbolic sex scenes ('we lay next to each other naked on towels, sunbathing' is replaced by 'then i slid my hand between his buttocks and fondled his balls'). I'm still on board. Cutting social satire as well? Lovely. Two things stop this being five-star worthy though: first, the joy I took in the first half at this not being an AIDS novels was dulled when it, well,...more
Can I just tell you how much I want to give this book one star? I loathed every single person in it, up to and including the author. LOATHED. His characters are without exception so morally bankrupt, so engorged (in every sense...) with their own earnest, self-satisfied privilege that the only possible explanation is that Hollinghurst is exactly like them. I don't like to believe that about a person I've never met. But sometimes you gotta.
But... but... Hollinghurst's writing. It's so ...more
But... but... Hollinghurst's writing. It's so ...more
Линия красоты как линия фронта
Елена Карпос-Дедюхина
Автор рецензии: Дедюхина Елена
Дата публикации: 29 ноября 2005 г.
Рецензия на книгу "Линия красоты": Роман (пер. с англ. Холмогоровой Н.Л.)
Предвижу огромный разброс мнений по поводу "Линии красоты" Алана Холлингхерста - от полного неприятия до бурного восторга.
Что стало причиной букеровского успеха именно этой книги Холлингхерста? Та объективность в описаниях гомосексуальн...more
Елена Карпос-Дедюхина
Автор рецензии: Дедюхина Елена
Дата публикации: 29 ноября 2005 г.
Рецензия на книгу "Линия красоты": Роман (пер. с англ. Холмогоровой Н.Л.)
Предвижу огромный разброс мнений по поводу "Линии красоты" Алана Холлингхерста - от полного неприятия до бурного восторга.
Что стало причиной букеровского успеха именно этой книги Холлингхерста? Та объективность в описаниях гомосексуальн...more
Nick Guest is aptly named. When he moves into the attic of a Kensington Gardens home, it is as a friend of Toby Fedden, son of Tory MP Gerald Fedden. A supposed temporary arrangement, whilst Guest studies for a doctorate on style in Henry James's work (which is never completed). This is 1983, the height of Thatcherism, the 'greed is good' culture, and the insinuation of HIV and AIDS into the gay community. Where does Nick belong? No longer with his more humble family, he believes that he is one...more
This book was much better and deeper and more-faceted than I expected. I read "The Swimming Pool Library" when I was in high school (asked my mom to borrow it for me from her workplace), for gay sex, and wasn't disappointed, and then after so many years I got this one, and bought it, again, mainly for gay sex, and not only wasn't disappointed, but got so much more.
Basically this book is a huge novel of manners, its action set among the privileged and rich of the Thatcher age ...more
Basically this book is a huge novel of manners, its action set among the privileged and rich of the Thatcher age ...more
Confession: I have a rather strange reading habit and this novel is a good example of it. Although this Booker winner has been on my shelf FOR YEARS I didn't read it until I had watched the BBC production . . . and THEN I suddenly wanted to get the more textured, detailed version that you get from a novel. Of course, the problem with reading a book (after you see some filmic version of it!) is that THOSE characters (the way they look, and all of their verbal/physical mannerisms) are imposed u...more
I tend to choose books with gold stickers. I just don't have time to read enough, so I want to read the good stuff. For some reason, Booker Prize winners tend to be right up my alley. This book was billed as a political novel of taking place in 80's England and it won the Booker Prize so I thought - sounds good.
Then a gay friend of mine saw it with me he said (slightly aghast) "Why are you reading a gay novel?" I promptly told him that was reverse discrimination - I could ...more
Then a gay friend of mine saw it with me he said (slightly aghast) "Why are you reading a gay novel?" I promptly told him that was reverse discrimination - I could ...more
A social satire set in the eighties that takes in class, homosexuality and the morals of the time.
Nick Guest is a working class guest at a tory mps home, through his friendship with there kids. He is also as camp as a row of tents. If you are likely to be offput by details of homosexual extreme behaviour, i would steer clear of this. It starts with him having an affair with a young black fella and moves on to a doomed affair with a married millionaire called Wani.
The M...more
Nick Guest is a working class guest at a tory mps home, through his friendship with there kids. He is also as camp as a row of tents. If you are likely to be offput by details of homosexual extreme behaviour, i would steer clear of this. It starts with him having an affair with a young black fella and moves on to a doomed affair with a married millionaire called Wani.
The M...more
Accolades for the lines of beauty in The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst has consistently written intelligent and sensual novels ("The Swimming Pool Library", "The Folding Star" and "The Spell") that have found a readership that crosses over from his initial audience of readers of Gay fiction to the audience of readers who simply appreciate fine literature. And with THE LINE OF BEAUTY his merits have been rewarded not only by the acclaimed Booker Award, ...more
Alan Hollinghurst has consistently written intelligent and sensual novels ("The Swimming Pool Library", "The Folding Star" and "The Spell") that have found a readership that crosses over from his initial audience of readers of Gay fiction to the audience of readers who simply appreciate fine literature. And with THE LINE OF BEAUTY his merits have been rewarded not only by the acclaimed Booker Award, ...more
When I first read about this book I was a bit turned off, so was very surprised to find a novel that I liked enormously. It’s a social satire/novel of manners, a bit slow at first until you start catching on that the main character says one thing in a given situation but lets you know what he ‘really’ thinks. He’s not the narrator though, but a “center of consciousness” (Henry James style—fittingly since Nick is a recent Oxford grad come to London to work on a doctorate with a dissertation on Ja...more
Oh man. I hate this book. I was full of dismay when it appeared, glowing brightly on the updated version of the 1001 books list. I read it a couple of years ago, and it made me froth at the mouth. I figured I'd give it a second chance, maybe discover some of the apparently wonderful humour it's supposed to contain, an extra level of satire I'd somehow missed.
But no. Maybe I just don't get it. There isn't a single character I feel anything but revulsion for in this novel. The way in w...more
But no. Maybe I just don't get it. There isn't a single character I feel anything but revulsion for in this novel. The way in w...more
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Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist, and winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.
He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford graduating in 1975; and subsequently took the further degree of Master of Literature (1979). While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, the year before Motion.
In th...more
More about Alan Hollinghurst...
He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford graduating in 1975; and subsequently took the further degree of Master of Literature (1979). While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, the year before Motion.
In th...more
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“The worse they are the more they see beauty in each other.”
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“...all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.”
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