Meg's review
The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
Meg's review
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Meg's review
rating:
bookshelves:
fiction
recommended for: Joey M
Won the Booker last year. And, in theory, I liked this book - the hypocrisy of an MP and his crazy wealthy family in the era of Thatcher and AIDS. But, I just couldn't quite get myself to stop thinking that I was reading Literature and get into the book and the people. The character's gayness, and his flings, were interesting enough. But overall, I just really couldn't like anybody (OK, except the main character's first boyfriend, but his five minutes did not make the rest of the novel). It wasn't so much that I don't like a certain level of moral ambiguity in my characters, I just felt everyone was too much a type (a philandering conservative politician, the golden son of rich parents who goes to seed and doesn't accomplish zip, the neurotic daughter who despises the family but can't escape, the wife who seems classy and unaware of her husband's doings...but is actually the power, the outsider watching envying their everything who is exiled at the end). Some good bits, and I can see o...more
