The Stranger's Child

by Alan Hollinghurst

there’s room in the world for more than one kind of beauty,”

Paul knew already that information was a form of property—people who had it liked to protect it, and enhance its value by hints and withholdings. Then, perhaps, they could move on to enjoying the glow of self-esteem and surrender in telling what they knew.

There were times in one’s life that one only knew as one passed through them, the decisive moments, when one saw that the decisions had been taken for one.

“George never exactly had normal human emotions, you see. I don’t know why. And I dare say it hasn’t done him any harm—life’s probably much simpler without them, though a bit dull, wouldn’t you think!”

he saw more clearly than ever that the writer of a life didn’t only write about the past, and that the secrets he dealt in might have all kinds of consequences in other lives, in years to come.