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The Line of Beauty

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 8,963 ratings · 686 reviews

The National Bestseller, Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist."One can't get enough of Hollinghurst's sentences...If you value style, wit, and social satire in your reading, don't miss this elegant and passionate novel."-"Washington Post" Winner of 2004's Man Booker Prize for fiction and one of the most talked abo...more

ebook, 400 pages

Published December 17th 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (first published April 16th 2004)

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Oct 08, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · 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

Shelves: hagging-out, crazy-ladies, groups-of-people, love-and-other-indoor-sports, substance-related-disorders, favorites

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 synthetic creamer,...more

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Aug 25, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2008-2010)

Shelves: 1001-non-core, gay-lit, sex, booker

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 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 writing that little novel that I have started writing after attending a novel-writing workshop three months ago.

Line of Beauty is a 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst. It is about gay men, most of them rich, in Thatcherite Britain in the early to mid-80’s. It is the first gay-themed book that won the Booker. Based on Wiki, the composition of the panel of judges changes every year so maybe its members were predominantly gays during that year since 2 (the other was Colm Toibin’s The Master) of the 6 finalist-books are gay-themed and this one won over the stylist – and my favorite – David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Prior to reading “Beauty”, I already read “Cloud” and “The Master” and both gave them 4 stars. I liked the brilliant structure of “Cloud” and the ethereal prose of “The Master” and they did not prepare me to the fact that there is still a better book than them and that is this Hollinghurst book. I agree with the Booker jurors.

Line of Beauty is taut and cohesive. It is neither pretentious nor self-serving. It tells the story flawlessly like there is no story worth telling than those of the characters in it. The plot is focused, crystal-clear in sharpness that it is illuminating and mesmerizing. It tells the story of Nick Guest a 21-y/o virgin gay who just graduated from Oxford and is currently working on his analysis of Henry James works for his masteral degree. (Interestingly, Toibin’s finalist book, “The Master” is the retelling of the early part of Henry James’ life.) Nick is invited by his fellow Oxford graduate and secret crush, a straight man, Toby to stay in the attic of their beautiful London upper class house. Toby still lives with the rest of the Feddens: his father Gerald, mother Rachel and his bi-polar sister Catherine. What follows is the 4-5 year awakening of Nick from the naïve and almost clueless Oxford graduate to somebody who’s aware of what’s going on in his surroundings. He ends up looking at the stark realities of London’s life in the 80s: being gay and relatively poor amidst the highly materialistic and generally homophobic London upper-class society. All these punctuated by the emerging threat of AIDS that spread like wildfire in the 80’s in all countries and levels of society.

It will be outright dishonesty if I say that I really liked this book because of its gay theme. The homosexual acts are just too much for my taste. However, I am not familiar with the sex lives of gay people and I don’t have any idea how frequent an average gay man gets laid or needs to get laid for him to have a sexually fulfilling life. I am not sure if Hollinghurst only wants to project an honest-to-goodness portrayal of the lives of gay men in the London in the 80’s but the language he used in this novel could be too much for some readers. It was a bit shocking for me considering that this is a Booker winner. However, if you look over this supposedly “honest” language and portrayal and focus on the prose, theme, plot and character development, you will see the beauty in the novel as a whole. I am just not sure about the metaphor of the double “S” being the so-called “line of beauty” since I have not seen – not that I am looking – a man with that curve all my life.

Thanks to Angus for being my buddy read for this book. You rock, Eng-ghez!(less)

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May 11, 2008 Yulia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-lit

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 Be...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Leigh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-novels, subject-queer, won-booker-prize, subject-aids, 2000-present

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 instead, to h...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Angus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize, reviewed-and-blogged, 5-stars

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Not quite a eulogy

I’ve been thinking lately about AIDS, so instead of just wallowing in musings, I decided to write something about this novel. I read it almost a year ago with one of my friends at our book club. At first, I didn’t realize that there’s anything gay in this novel. Not even the blurb at the back page of my copy winks at it, so I was surprised when graphic male sex was narrated at the early parts of the novel.

The novel is set during the turn of the...more

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Nov 25, 2007 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 way into the hearts and minds of the conservative Fedden clan -- ambiti...more

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Apr 27, 2007 Dustin rated it 5 of 5 stars · 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 gays, which is fine, bu...more

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Apr 03, 2007 Sreevatsa Kota rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

Be that as i...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.

Be that as it may, the book sags and crawls ponderously for the most part under its own stodgy weight making it pointless and vapid. The plot is found grossly wanting in humour and wherever there seems to exist a suggestion of it, it is perceived as either unimpressively wry or inconsequentially droll.

Perhaps the most painfully striking feature of the narrative is its disjointedness which makes the reader very restive as if to want to somehow quickly piece together the disparate components of a seemingly unending puzzle in order to get it over with. This aspect is also one which more than once irks the reader.

Quite plainly, but for the author's liberal and unnecessary use of excruciating magniloquence and highfalutin phraseology, as it were, in the book, there's nothing else about the book that might be worth reading and it still remains to me a very great mystery as to what it is about this Man Booker winning book that has enthralled the Booker panel of judges. It is anything but entertaining or absorbing- two of the more expected attributes of any book; most definitely those of a Booker Prize winner.

Having said that, in the same breath, the most comfortable quality of this book appears to be its pliant plot- you would not have to fret about losing track if you did not have the time to sit through it without putting it down at one rapid foolish go- in fact it does everything to afford you that luxury- it is certainly not unputdownnable, mark my words.

To sum, pick up the book and leaf through it to sample it at your own risk and decide for yourself if you have made a mistake in buying it or what had come over the Booker panel to have selected it for the prestigious prize.(less)

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May 06, 2008 Kimberly rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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, "Noooooo" a...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Oct 07, 2008 Becky rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

All that sex is, frankly, exhausting and never quite satisfying to either character or reader.

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Aug 14, 2008 David Ashton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The gay Great Gatsby in Thacher's England. Also, the best book I've read in years.

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Dec 20, 2012 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, read-in-2010, read-in-2012, field-exam-reading-list

I was hesitant to give this one 5-stars because there were a number of times where I found myself so furious with Nick Guest, the tryingly snobbish aesthete of the novel, that I needed to take a step back from the book and recognize that I don't *have* to be as awfully distanced from people as he is, simply because I'm more or less an American analog to him. I had to remind myself that having trouble identifying with the protagonist does not a bad book make, and of course, this is actually a qui...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library

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. The dialo...more 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. The dialogue in this book is scant, and you get the feeling that people are never truly communicating. Toward the end of the book, after the scandal has broken and their personal lives are reeling, people begin to let out their true feelings, and they still aren't saying the right things or understanding what the situation truly calls for.

Throughout the novel Nick has an obsessive internal monologue inside his head, it comes off as irritating at first (so tedious with his constant self-doubts), but you then are lulled to a place where you wonder if that's what you seem like to others, if you come off as tedious and self-loathing. If you're not one who leans toward insecurity then you have to compare yourself to the bombastic and self-absorbed character of Gerald. What Hollinghurst has done is set up charicatures of life--the outsider, the power-hungry, the spoiled elite--and you learn from them that you don't want to be like them. The idea of charicatures is brought up throughout the book as the family has a gallery of photos in their kitchen, and the author reminds you that these people are frozen in time as their larger-than-life personalities.

There are references to the effects of power and money on people, on the way they think and interact with one another. The manic/depressive daughter, Catherine, is led to be the narrator's true voice in this work, calling the upwardly mobile in Parliament "Monsters" rather than "Ministers," and doing her part to call a spade a spade. Catherine ends up being the catalyst that sparks the climax of the book--igniting the public scandal merely by telling the truth. Although Hollinghurst (and the publishers of the book) want you to think this book is about the effects of power and wealth, it's more about the simple truths--are secrets personal or impersonal?

The title of the book, The Line of Beauty, is referenced several times throughout the book, and Nick's quest for beauty in his surroundings and lovers is contantly used to reinforce this idea of what is true beauty. In one ironic use of the phrase Hollinghurst describes a line of cocaine (which is prolific through the last 2/3 of the book) as a line of beauty to Nick. Bringing the reader around, slowly but surely, to realize the age-old truth that beauty can be found anywhere that genuine experiences are had with genuine people.

All in all this was a good book, definitely deserving of prestigious British award of The Man Booker Prize in 2004. I decided upon a B+ rating because the author gets a little heavy-handed, his voice slightly intrusive into the reader's process, and the book is written in such a specific time and a specific place that it looses a touch of its meaning to contemporary readers who didn't fully experience the decadence and pretensions of the 1980's. (less)

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Oct 01, 2008 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ficciones

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 ad...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 advice to be one "on whom nothing is lost" remains central.

My one quibble is with the plotting, and with the various burdens of plot-advancement each character must bear. The scandalous denouement, the shameful secret-spilling that wraps up the book, is brought about by Catherine, the sister of Nick's undergrad crush Toby. Toby is the predictable Hetero Golden Boy Athlete, dull and style-less and unconscious of his allure, but Catherine is worse--Hollinghurst is lazy, or seems to be at a loss, and just opts to make her a typical Hysterical Female, a manic-depressive Poor Little Rich Girl who does drugs, makes impertinent comments at the dinner table, and dates roguish unsuitables to shock her parents. Nick, and his lovers Leo and Wani are so much more complex creations, and so much more important to the book, that it didn't bother me that Catherine was so banal and badly done--just as long as she was irrelevant. But then Hollinghurst uses her to bring about the big stuff at the end--she does something so much more malicious and deranged than anything she's done before. Her behavior is so implausible because Hollinghurst has given us no sense of what deep issues with her father and family would have made her act as she does. One can't skimp on the psychology of a character if that psychology is what turns the plot of the novel.

The book could have gotten along without so much of the Feddens, really. They provide the frame, the setting, and their small bag of traits and attitudes are sufficiently well shuffled and deployed as to make convincing characters--but Hollinghurst didn't really need to shift his focus back to them at the end. Wani's downward spiral, and Leo's death, are absorbing and heartbreaking enough. When I think of Leo on his bike I almost cry. (less)

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Jan 08, 2008 Shanley rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 the end of t...more

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Apr 20, 2010 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

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

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Jul 09, 2012 Nikki rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, lgbt

Couldn't get into this one at all -- maybe it's the diet of pulpy SF I've been on, but I just couldn't find anything to hook me in. The social class stuff frankly bores me, and what I'd forgive in a literary classic I couldn't get on with it here. I read a chapter, put the book down to watch Captain America (my new weakness: Marvel superheroes, or at least those played by Chris Evans, Scarlet Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Junior) and couldn't even remember where I'd go...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

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 _

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Mar 07, 2013 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brilliantly, painfully written. Every sentence is a study of impeccable craftsmanship. Get out your highlighters, kids, and get ready to diagram the shit out of this book.
(view spoiler)...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Pauline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked to read "The Line of Beauty"; the story passed by like a summer’s day and before I knew it, the book was finished. The last paragraph was very beautiful and reminded me of the equally beautiful ending of Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby". In fact the character of Nick Guest reminded me very much of Nick Carraway; both Nicks are introduced in ‘high society’ and enjoy the glamorous parties, beautiful mansions in France or Long Island but they both gradually become aware of the superficiality...more I liked to read "The Line of Beauty"; the story passed by like a summer’s day and before I knew it, the book was finished. The last paragraph was very beautiful and reminded me of the equally beautiful ending of Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby". In fact the character of Nick Guest reminded me very much of Nick Carraway; both Nicks are introduced in ‘high society’ and enjoy the glamorous parties, beautiful mansions in France or Long Island but they both gradually become aware of the superficiality of the world of money. Both novels can be seen as a kind of exposure of an era; The Great Gatsby unveils the artificiality of the Roaring Twenties while The Line of Beauty gives us an insight look in England under ‘the iron lady’ Thatcher.
I did have some troubles with the main character, Nick Guest. He reveals the double standards and hypocrisy of the rich people he meets; which makes the reader feel contempt for them but at the same time Nick himself seems to have double standards. On the one hand it seems as if Nick really wants to belong in this upper class world; he flatters people, says things he does not mean and constantly degrades himself for them but on the other hand he thinks he is so much better than them because he is the true aesthete who knows everything about art and literature while they only want to buy into it. I did not understand why Nick wanted to be part of that superficial world, I sort of wanted to shout at him to leave the place of the Feddens because gradually it became clear that Nick got corrupted by their lifestyle.
As the title already indicates, ‘Beauty’ is a very important motive in the novel. Nick Guest is very sensitive to beauty and he seems to have an insatiable hunger for it. Probably this search for beauty is the reason why he stays in the house of the Feddens; they are beautiful people with money for beautiful clothes, cars, houses in Notting Hill, France and Barbados, and they own a lot of art. It is the beauty, although very superficial, of their world of evening soirees and big birthday parties that attracts Nick.
However, positivist as I am, I think that the sad ending indicates that Nick does not need the Feddens anymore to find beauty as the final, beautiful sentence of the book goes as follows: “It wasn’t just this street corner [of the street where he had lived with the Feddens] but the fact of a street corner at all that seemed, in the light of the moment, so beautiful” (Hollinghurst, 501).
(less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Mauberley added it · review of another edition

I hadn't read anything of Hollinghurst's since 'The Swimming Pool Diaries' and I found myself idly ready the first few pages of this book when I came across a copy at my beloved local library. It was impossible to put it aside. Beautifully written in high Jamesian style, this is a penetrating look back to the Thatcher era in London as seen through the lives of some its most privileged denizens. The title is well-explained within the book although I think that the author could just as appropriate...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Helene rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker, fiction

I picked this up because it is a Booker Prize winner and available unabridged as an audio book. Though it is primarily well reviewed ( four and five stars), it didn't grab me, in fact, I think if I were reading it instead of listening to it, I would have dropped out.

The gay male sex was not my cup of tea but I would venture to say was well written and probably real for the time (early 80's). That it is set in Thatcher's time and in a Tory family did not seem that relevant to me. It could have b...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this novel was the first time I have read a novel and enjoyed or looked forward to the sex scenes. Rubbish, you may say.

Assuming you represent the heterosexual consensus view, imagine for a moment if all your favourite authors wrote sex from a gay angle. You would be bored, wouldn't you? Romeo and Julian? Gabrielle Oak and Bathsheba? Rhett Butler carrying an unconscious Scott O'Hara from the burning Tara? It just wouldn't be the same. When gay characters do appear in modern literature t...more

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Sep 06, 2012 A.M. Riley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You perhaps shouldn't read this if you haven't yet read the book. it is a little bit spoilerish.

It is apt that the protagonist is a student of Henry James. His prose has a clear precise simplicity that James seemed to avoid, but in many ways they are like. The beautiful rich descriptions of impressions and the emotional effect of objects and people. And, of course, a study of the upper class which seemed, to me, almost predictable.

When I think of the eighties, especially the 'party' days, I thin...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Meg Mundell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a left-leaning type who's not especially fond of tales about the upper classes, I really didn't expect to like this book - it's set in Thatcher-era Britain, amongst a family of wealthy conservatives - but to my great surprise I absolutely loved it. The aptly named Nick Guest, a naive and socially ambitious young gay man who yearns to belong and feel loved, comes to stay with the family of a rich and upwardly mobile government minister, and we witness their privileged social circle through his...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Petr rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tlustý román napsaný zcela tradiční formou se v dnešní době zas tak často nevidí. Lineární vyprávění, jeden hlavní hrdina, klubko vedlejších postav, rozsah děje několik let, žádné formální triky a úskoky. Jako by to napsala Austenová nebo Dickens.

Spíš Austenová, protože děj se točí kolem vztahů a lásek. Hlavní hrdina má pěkně mluvící jméno Nicholas Guest a skutečně se pohybuje hlavně v prostředích, která nejsou jeho. Je hostem v londýnském sídle bohatého konzervativního poslance, kde bydlí v pod...more Tlustý román napsaný zcela tradiční formou se v dnešní době zas tak často nevidí. Lineární vyprávění, jeden hlavní hrdina, klubko vedlejších postav, rozsah děje několik let, žádné formální triky a úskoky. Jako by to napsala Austenová nebo Dickens.

Spíš Austenová, protože děj se točí kolem vztahů a lásek. Hlavní hrdina má pěkně mluvící jméno Nicholas Guest a skutečně se pohybuje hlavně v prostředích, která nejsou jeho. Je hostem v londýnském sídle bohatého konzervativního poslance, kde bydlí v podnájmu. Je však také hostem ve světě svého prvního milence Lea a je úplným cizincem tam, kam ho vede další milenec Wani. Nepatří nikam; prochází. Aniž by mu to dělalo těžkou hlavu, aspoň do jistého bodu.

Důležitým pozadím románu je život britské vyšší společnosti a politických kruhů v době vlády Margaret Tchatcherové (o níž se pořád mluví a nakonec se, vytoužená, scénou skutečně mihne); hlavním tématem však bezesporu je mužská homosexualita. Autor zachytil britskou gay scénu v krátkém přechodném období, kdy coming out už nebyl strašákem a AIDS ještě ne; svět rychlých známostí a promiskuitních zábav bohatých hochů. Ten se nám ale před očima rozpadá a spolu s ním Nickova bezstarostnost.

A také jeho životní plány a směřování: kromě studia literatury (které končí), záliby v krásných historických předmětech (které nikdy nebudou jeho), bílého prášku (na který mu jeho vlastní peníze nestačí a který se mu začíná vymykat z rukou) a sexu (který se stává otráveným jablkem) — co ten Nick vlastně má? Červenou mazdu, dárek od bohatého Waniho; iluze o lidech, kteří se k němu pod tlakem skandálu otáčejí zády. Na konci románu je Nick dočista na začátku. Člověk by ho litoval, ale nějak nemůže, protože on si to před našima očima způsobil sám, svou povrchností a nezájmem o budoucnost. Guest, host ve vlastním životě. A kdo z nás jím trochu není?

Chodník už místy uschl, ale nebe vypadalo hrozivě a hnaly se po něm mraky. Vysoké bílé fasády tlumeně zářily. Napadlo ho, že test bude pozitivní. (...) Zkoušel si tu hrůzu rozumově vymluvit, ale její vábení bylo příliš originální a silné. Skrývala se v jeho nitru, ale i okolní svět, zaparkovaná auta, projíždějící taxík, kostekní věž za stromy byly jiné, jakoby obnažené. Nick si připadal jako v rauši, jen bez onoho vědomí, že je to jen hra. Motorkář odnaproti vydusal ze dveří a začal se věnovat svému stroji. Nick se na něj zadíval a pak pohled odvrátil v žalu, který se ho zmocnil, zaléval ho a vyděloval. Ten člověk pro něj nemohl udělat vůbec nic. Ani nikdo z jeho přátel ho nezachrání. Přišel čas a oni se tu zprávu dověděli tam, kde zrovna byli, v určitém okamžiku svého denního rozvrhu, který pokračoval i pak.

Britská společnost, zejména její třídní hierarchie, na našince působí trochu marťanským dojmem, ale Hollinghurst bezpochyby přesně ví, o čem píše. Vedlejší postavy, i ty okrajové, letmo načrtnuté, jsou jako živé. Portréty politiků nevycházejí lichotivě až na samotnou Tchatcherovou, „Madam“, o níž se nikde neřekne křivého slova.

Kniha je, nutno říci, velmi silně erotická, protože Nick... protože Nick má prostě rád sex a když ho nemůže dělat, myslí na něj. Autor je decentní, zdrženlivý, spíš naznačuje, než aby se pouštěl do naturalistických popisů, ale naznačovat umí velmi dobře, takže erotickým napětím se text jen jen chvěje. Velmi dobře si tady můžete vyzkoušet, zda jste homofobní, nebo nejste, nebo... ta třetí možnost.

Linie krásy získala v roce svého vydání (2004) Man Booker Prize. Řekl bych, že plným právem. Pozoruhodná kniha: kontroverzní a konzervativní zároveň.

Za speciální bonus vždy pokládám, když mě kniha přesvědčí, že si mám poslechnout, případně pořídit hudbu, která v ní hraje nějakou roli. Tentokrát to byla Beethovenova klavírní sonáta Es dur č. 26 „Les Adieux“. (less)

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Jan 24, 2012 David Williams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 time-frame of...more 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 time-frame of the novel (1983-1987) Nick is living as a guest in the family home of his well-to-do friend from Oxford days, Toby, and it is in this environment that he and we meet most of the other characters, including Toby's father, the ambitious junior Tory minister Gerald Fedden. There is even a memorable encounter (and a dance, no less) with Mrs Thatcher, referred to within the family as 'The Lady'.

Nick does have a secret life too; we follow him from innocence through to a series of casual homosexual encounters as well as a longer-term gay relationship, sometimes fuelled by cocaine, and shadowed by the then-new threat of Aids. Nick is a libertine but no hell-raiser; he is known by the family as 'the aesthete' and spends most of his time in quiet observation or hardly-noticed participation in the family affairs, until events conspire to provide him with a more dramatic and unwanted role in proceedings as the story moves to its climax.

'The Line of Beauty' works on many levels. It's a superbly-nuanced study of manners in Thatcher's Britain; it's stiletto-stealth satire; it's revealing and frank about the lifestyle adopted by some members of the gay community (though I wearied of the sex, if I may say that without sounding like an over-worked prostitute); and it's an aesthetic delight.

The narrative interiority is for me both a strength and a weakness. Hollinghurst's presentation of the emotional depths and shallow insights of Nick is faultless but Nick's inadequacies in human understanding become ours too - so many of his otherwise brilliant character expositions fail to penetrate to the heart. As a result we get to know Nick inside out, but the supporting cast only outside in. Hollinghurst's intense, masterful use of his chosen narrative device is, paradoxically, what prevents 'The Line of Beauty' claiming an unarguable place as a great book; but it gets close. (less)

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Jan 09, 2012 Diana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 living in Lond...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Michael Bennett rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british, booker, fiction, 2005

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 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 1981 (when it first won) but that it was still hitting the right notes in 1993. And even though “The Satanic Verses” didn’t win (it lost to “Oscar and Lucinda” which is also a great book) I will still lap up every book that the Booker judges deem worthy of my library, or at least my library card. So when “The Line of Beauty” was announced (with some surprise) as 2004’s best book to come out of the commonwealth, it was an automatic that I would read it relatively soon. The buzz that surrounded it unfortunately centered entirely around the fact that it is a “gay novel” (whatever that means) and didn’t happen to tout its quality as much as some of the other books (“Cloud Atlas” for one). But “Line of Beauty” took the crown and so it finds its way into my hands (a Christmas present –thank you Michael).[return]My first impressions were not overly strong however. I was a bit bored honestly. Though the writing is good (not jaw-dropping but never bad) and the truth of the characters is undeniable, it didn’t grab me. Its strength is certainly the way he deals with what the characters aren’t saying. He expertly parses the subtext of every exchange as the third person narrator and brings to the fore what is only gestured or implied by the conversations. Here is a sample of what I mean from an early conversation between the main character (Nick) and Tristao, a waiter at the party in the halls of a castle that Nick is attending: [return]“’Yeah…’ said Nick, and gave a shrug and a large ironical laugh. He wanted to impress Tristao as a Hawkeswood guest, and to mock at the guests as well. He wanted to suggest that he was having a perfectly good time, that the staff, certainly, could not have done more, but that he could take it or leave it; and besides (here he half closed his eyes, suavely and daringly) he had a better idea about how to have fun. Tristao perhaps didn’t get all that at once.” (74).[return]When he elaborates the entire text of the conversation where the characters are often lying or merely gesturing (and almost certainly posturing) the book is at its strongest and most entertaining, however you can only get by for so long by fleshing out the meaning of a raised eyebrow.[return]It was a well written and interesting book. I found the characters believable and their stories interesting, but all in all was not engaged by the whole thing. In my opinion this is a good, but by no means a great, book. I for one feel that the Booker dropped the ball that year.(less)

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About Alan Hollinghurst

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 the late 1970s he became a...more

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“...all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.” — 9 people liked it

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