The Line of Beauty in Queereaders

Aug 22, 2008 Robert Dunbar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviews, favorites

Frustrated by his first brush with romance, Nick Guest feels he’s been “swept to the brink of some new promise.” The moment is profoundly poignant.

Though The Line of Beauty runs through a period scarcely more than twenty-five years in the past, time already seems to have rendered Margaret Thatcher’s England as misty and distant as something out of Brideshead Revisited. Could the world really have changed this much so quickly? That misty quality is deceptive. In this penetrating and mature work, ...more

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Sep 06, 2008 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: booker-prize

2004. Another Booker Prize Winner I liked but couldn't love. Another year when the winner was less impressive than those it beat. And now it is 2011 and Alan Hollinghurst's new book The Stranger's Child has been long listed for this year's prize and already he's the bookmakers' pick to win.

He probably will, and maybe this time he'll deserve it.

That's not fair of me, though. It's not like The Line of Beauty was a bad book. I enjoyed it well enough. The characters were engaging (I especially liked ...more

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Sep 14, 2010 Bill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-fiction, favorite-books-re-read, fiction-literary, prize-winners

The Line of Beauty

—is an elegant portrait of the rise and fall of a recent Oxford graduate playing at being privileged.
—is a coming out story of said grad who does not quite come of age.
—is a British period piece during the Thatcher reign.
—is an exposé of useless pedantry
—shows that a social class, by any name, is a social class
—is reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh in prose and mood

I read this after seeing the movie, so had pictures in my mind of the characters. It did not ruin the book for me. I ...more

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Feb 28, 2009 Jamie rated it it was amazing

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

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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Sep 02, 2009 Grady rated it it was amazing

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, but also by a rather phenomenal presale de 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, but also by a rather phenomenal presale demand. Hollinghurst is simply one of the best of the current writers.

THE LINE OF BEAUTY is more than a finely tuned story about class differences, the foibles of the wealthy and ruling class of England, the hypocrisy of the Thatcher era in the 1980s, the recognition of the media watch dogs gobbling rumors about the government and the concurrent homophobia /rise of AIDS/druggie culture as seen through the proscenium arch of London. This book is very much a character study of one Nicholas Guest, a young middle class lad, graduate of Oxford, who (much like Ripley!) yearns for the luxuries of the wealthy and gentried such as Gerald and Rachel Fedden who live in a mansion in Notting Hill with their troubled (read 'speaks her mind') daughter Catherine and son Toby, the object of gay Nicholas' infatuation since their shared years at Oxford.

The novel follows Nick's absorption into the Fedden family, being accepted as an aesthete, his first same sex affair with a handsome black clerk whom he encounters through a personal ad in the gay rag, his dalliances with the famous (including Margaret Thatcher herself), with a millionaire closeted playboy Wani who introduces him to drugs and more, and with creating a magazine with Wani which is the pinnacle of glossy aesthetics cum hoity toity. The various characters in this 'rake's progress' remain threaded through this story until all of the misguided judgments and turns of fate crumble Nick's world of fantasy.

Yet as if this strong and fascinating story weren't enough, it is Hollinghurst's intelligence and writing style that mesmerize. He has the ability to begin phases of his tale with peripheral information that causes the reader to wonder exactly where he is taking us: he creates a stage setting with scenery and props that must be in place before the first character speaks the lines that define so cogently where the author has arrived. His quality of prose is exquisite both in describing the beauty seen and imagined and the 'squalor' intermittently encountered. He fleshes out each of his characters with such skill that we feel inside their heads even before they speak their lines.

If there is a flaw in this tome it is a minor one: unless the reader is a thorough-going anglophile or has lived in some part of the UK, the various aspects of class distinction and governmental abbreviations require a bit of stalling to decipher. But then what is reading all about, if not for pleasure and for edification? THE LINE OF BEAUTY is a brilliant novel by a gifted writer and deserves the attention of everyone who loves great books.

Grady Harp ...more

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Sep 06, 2012 A.M. Riley rated it it was amazing

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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