From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

The Line of Beauty

Alan Hollinghurst

Start date: January 26, 2015

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Apr 20, 2010 Sarah rated it it was ok

Shelves: 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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Jan 18, 2010 William rated it liked it · review of another edition

People are lovely because we love them, not the other way round.

At times, this is an excellent satire of Britain under Thatcher. Moments of subtlety, where the reader isn't quite given all the information they need (and therefore need to piece together the events in their head) are nicely juxtaposed with the explicit sex scenes. Some of the writing in the novel is fantastic (but some of it, particularly the sex scenes, is awful), and the ending is crushingly good. Sadly, the middle section seeme ...more

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Sep 03, 2013 Booktart marked it as to-read

I had to return this to the library but would like to finish it soon. Hollinghurst's writing is beautiful, as I had heard. It just was not necessarily a quick read and lately I've been into shorter faster paced books. ...more

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