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annaelisereads's review against another edition
3.0
A love (or lust) story revisited across generations, The Stranger's Child examines truth, reality, memory, and myth-making. The book starts with the love triangle in question and then checks in with the three (and adds some new ones) throughout the next 60 or so years. I liked the first two iterations, but as time elapsed, I got less and less interested in the story.
mmparker's review against another edition
2.0
A strange, melancholy book redeemed by some of the most nuanced descriptions of commonplace feelings I've ever read.
snowmaiden's review against another edition
4.0
This book begins in 1913 and ends in 2008, spanning almost a whole century. I really liked the first section and would have gladly spent a whole novel in that setting with those characters, but that wasn’t the author’s intent. Instead we take great leaps forward through the twentieth century and beyond, seeing how the lives of the 1913 characters are interpreted and reinterpreted by successive generations. I really enjoy Hollinghurst’s gentle and discerning style, but I felt the emotional impact of the book was less than it could have been. Also, certain characters changed in ways that didn’t make sense to me. Still, I am eager to read something else by this author.
ashdreads's review against another edition
2.0
I don't normally give books two stars, but in all honesty I kind of wish I just put this one down after the first two parts and let it go. I read this in the first place because it was nominated as one of the 2012 books in this year's Tournament of Books, so I kept hoping that the story would somehow become more interesting... unfortunately for me it did not.
In a lot of ways the writing style reminded me of The Northern Clemency. Another book by an English author that I struggled with. It felt with both that the plot just meandered along with really no action whatsoever.
There is a recap of the plot at the end of the kindle edition I read. If I were to do this over, I would just read those few pages and call the book read. It would have saved me from what I consider a fairly painful and ultimately disappointing reading experience.
Also for the life of me I can't figure out why the book is titled, "The Stranger's Child". Does anyone know?
In a lot of ways the writing style reminded me of The Northern Clemency. Another book by an English author that I struggled with. It felt with both that the plot just meandered along with really no action whatsoever.
There is a recap of the plot at the end of the kindle edition I read. If I were to do this over, I would just read those few pages and call the book read. It would have saved me from what I consider a fairly painful and ultimately disappointing reading experience.
Also for the life of me I can't figure out why the book is titled, "The Stranger's Child". Does anyone know?
fictionfan's review against another edition
1.0
When all the world was gay...
I normally start a review with a little blurb giving an idea of what the book’s about. Unfortunately, despite having read 53% of this immensely overlong tome, I’m not at all sure if it’s about anything much at all. And I’m not enthusiastic enough to read the other 47% in the hopes of finding out.
It starts off pretty well, with a lengthy section set before World War 1. Young George Sawle has invited a fellow student from Cambridge to visit his family. Cecil Valance is already making a name for himself as a poet and George’s younger sister Daphne is romantically thrilled at the idea of meeting him. It’s quickly clear however that she will have to compete with her brother for Cecil’s attentions. At every opportunity the two of them, Cecil and George, go off to find a place they can be private together for a bit of still-illicit rumpy-pumpy. This doesn’t stop the lovely Cecil from flirting with 16-year-old Daphne and even on one occasion sexually assaulting her. Though maybe that was supposed to be a seduction scene – I can’t be sure. These things are often a matter of perspective. Meantime a friend of the family, Harry, whom everyone thinks is courting Daphne’s widowed mother, is in fact attempting to seduce Daphne’s other brother, Hubert.
It’s beautifully written and very evocative, not only of the period, but of all the books that have already been written about that period. Brideshead Revisited and The Go-Between sprang immediately to my mind and other reviews mention Forster, Woolf, DH Lawrence, et al. Is it derivative, then? I’d say certainly, though I gave him the benefit of thinking it’s deliberately so. The idea that all the men were either actively gay or being pursued by gay men seemed a bit unlikely on a purely statistical basis, but I made allowances for fictional licence. At this point I thought it had the potential to be excellent.
Then suddenly it skips forward to 1926. Cecil, our main character, is dead. And yet there’s still 80% of the book to go. Not to worry! George is now married though still gay. Daphne is married too, but wants to have sex with another probably gay man, whom, let’s be honest, George wouldn’t mind having sex with either. But please don’t be thinking Hollinghurst discriminates – Daphne is also hit upon by a gay woman. I was still interested enough at this point since some of the original characters were still central, and this section is largely about how they all felt about Cecil, alive and dead. And the writing is still beautiful.
Then whoops! 40% and suddenly we leap forward again, this time to around 1960, I think. And all of a sudden we have two new central characters, Peter and Paul. They’re both gay, you’ll be amazed to learn. The descendants of the original families are still around but they’re mostly new to the reader too, since many of the original characters are now dead.
I simply lost interest at this point. Long descriptions of Paul’s job at a bank and Peter’s life as a master at a prep school did nothing for me, and frankly, just as much as it’s unrealistic to have no gay characters in fiction, it’s equally silly for the vast majority of the men to be gay. Perhaps it’s an attempt to redress the balance, but balance is a tricky thing – it’s so easy to lose. But much more importantly than that, there appears to be very little connecting plot holding the various sections together. Yes, Cecil’s house appears each time and yes, some characters continue to be related to him, but more distantly with each passing time jump. I suspect Hollinghurst may be making points about how society’s treatment of gay men changed over the last century, and perhaps also about how the reputations of poets tend to fluctuate as each new generation of critics re-assesses them. Maybe if I was willing to read the other six hours’ worth (according to my Kindle) all would become clear, but, I ask myself, do I care enough to do that? And I answer – nope. Oh, well. Still, it’s beautifully written.
It probably deserves four stars for the quality of the characterisation and lovely prose, but since it bored me into abandonment, one star is all it gets.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
I normally start a review with a little blurb giving an idea of what the book’s about. Unfortunately, despite having read 53% of this immensely overlong tome, I’m not at all sure if it’s about anything much at all. And I’m not enthusiastic enough to read the other 47% in the hopes of finding out.
It starts off pretty well, with a lengthy section set before World War 1. Young George Sawle has invited a fellow student from Cambridge to visit his family. Cecil Valance is already making a name for himself as a poet and George’s younger sister Daphne is romantically thrilled at the idea of meeting him. It’s quickly clear however that she will have to compete with her brother for Cecil’s attentions. At every opportunity the two of them, Cecil and George, go off to find a place they can be private together for a bit of still-illicit rumpy-pumpy. This doesn’t stop the lovely Cecil from flirting with 16-year-old Daphne and even on one occasion sexually assaulting her. Though maybe that was supposed to be a seduction scene – I can’t be sure. These things are often a matter of perspective. Meantime a friend of the family, Harry, whom everyone thinks is courting Daphne’s widowed mother, is in fact attempting to seduce Daphne’s other brother, Hubert.
It’s beautifully written and very evocative, not only of the period, but of all the books that have already been written about that period. Brideshead Revisited and The Go-Between sprang immediately to my mind and other reviews mention Forster, Woolf, DH Lawrence, et al. Is it derivative, then? I’d say certainly, though I gave him the benefit of thinking it’s deliberately so. The idea that all the men were either actively gay or being pursued by gay men seemed a bit unlikely on a purely statistical basis, but I made allowances for fictional licence. At this point I thought it had the potential to be excellent.
Then suddenly it skips forward to 1926. Cecil, our main character, is dead. And yet there’s still 80% of the book to go. Not to worry! George is now married though still gay. Daphne is married too, but wants to have sex with another probably gay man, whom, let’s be honest, George wouldn’t mind having sex with either. But please don’t be thinking Hollinghurst discriminates – Daphne is also hit upon by a gay woman. I was still interested enough at this point since some of the original characters were still central, and this section is largely about how they all felt about Cecil, alive and dead. And the writing is still beautiful.
Then whoops! 40% and suddenly we leap forward again, this time to around 1960, I think. And all of a sudden we have two new central characters, Peter and Paul. They’re both gay, you’ll be amazed to learn. The descendants of the original families are still around but they’re mostly new to the reader too, since many of the original characters are now dead.
I simply lost interest at this point. Long descriptions of Paul’s job at a bank and Peter’s life as a master at a prep school did nothing for me, and frankly, just as much as it’s unrealistic to have no gay characters in fiction, it’s equally silly for the vast majority of the men to be gay. Perhaps it’s an attempt to redress the balance, but balance is a tricky thing – it’s so easy to lose. But much more importantly than that, there appears to be very little connecting plot holding the various sections together. Yes, Cecil’s house appears each time and yes, some characters continue to be related to him, but more distantly with each passing time jump. I suspect Hollinghurst may be making points about how society’s treatment of gay men changed over the last century, and perhaps also about how the reputations of poets tend to fluctuate as each new generation of critics re-assesses them. Maybe if I was willing to read the other six hours’ worth (according to my Kindle) all would become clear, but, I ask myself, do I care enough to do that? And I answer – nope. Oh, well. Still, it’s beautifully written.
It probably deserves four stars for the quality of the characterisation and lovely prose, but since it bored me into abandonment, one star is all it gets.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
likecymbeline's review against another edition
4.0
I read [b:The Swimming-Pool Library|30106|The Swimming-Pool Library|Alan Hollinghurst|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388450054s/30106.jpg|2776591] last September (while I was training around Europe) and loved it and still think of it often (the prose more than the plot). I'm still looking to read [b:The Line of Beauty|139087|The Line of Beauty|Alan Hollinghurst|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172099924s/139087.jpg|918312] and am sure I will soon, but for the time being I started on this one, not quite certain of what to expect. It affected me oddly--I was so frustrated by the way that social mores interfere with the biographer's ability to get the whole picture (I won't use the word 'truth'). It reminded me in so many ways of my own plight when conducting research on figures from the past who were forced to conceal their identity. The men I worked on were even faithful keepers-of-records a la Harry Hewitt in this novel, and yet still concealed a great deal in their letters to each other out of necessity. I know very well the difficulty of forming an accurate picture, and in this case it's especially frustrating for the reader because we know the things that actually happened, we read about them in the earlier parts.
The breaks between each part were wonderfully executed, as you attempted to figure out where the thread picked up from the previous section. There were such strong elements of Waugh and Forster running through it, and I found in some ways, especially in the middle parts, that it seemed like Hollinghurst was kind of re-writing a Forster novel, pursuing things past the end and on into the spanning decades (those decades Forster ceased publishing in). I really enjoyed it, but the ending didn't go quite where I expected (though the ultimate disappointment was as masochistically satisfying as The Swimming-Pool Library).
The breaks between each part were wonderfully executed, as you attempted to figure out where the thread picked up from the previous section. There were such strong elements of Waugh and Forster running through it, and I found in some ways, especially in the middle parts, that it seemed like Hollinghurst was kind of re-writing a Forster novel, pursuing things past the end and on into the spanning decades (those decades Forster ceased publishing in). I really enjoyed it, but the ending didn't go quite where I expected (though the ultimate disappointment was as masochistically satisfying as The Swimming-Pool Library).
carolynf's review against another edition
2.0
I only made it about halfway through, and that took real effort. Part of the problem is that nothing much happened in it. The main theme seemed to be how people dealt with homosexuality at various periods from the 1910s to the modern day. But the book jumped from period to period with too many changes in cast. I guess it is supposed to be suspenseful, trying to figure out how the new characters being introduced will connect up to the ones introduced at the beginning. But I just found it irritating. Daphne is introduced in the first section of the book and reappears the most often in later parts. Because one of the characters introduced in the first part is a poet, another theme is how writers are interpreted by society after their death, which I also did not find particularly interesting.
wizard_of_uhhh's review
3.0
Ehhhhhhh.
If sprawling family sagas are your thing, you'll enjoy this. The writing is excellent, and the characters are convincing. The thing is though that reading this book helped me realise something: sprawling family sagas aren't my thing.
There's something about the way the story goes all over the place, spread out over decades, that just doesn't appeal. The book is divided into sections that take place in different time periods, and each one is too short for me, not going into enough character depth to hook me. I like my plot thicker and more centred somehow, I think.
I'm going to stop rambling now and find something more satisfying to read.
If sprawling family sagas are your thing, you'll enjoy this. The writing is excellent, and the characters are convincing. The thing is though that reading this book helped me realise something: sprawling family sagas aren't my thing.
There's something about the way the story goes all over the place, spread out over decades, that just doesn't appeal. The book is divided into sections that take place in different time periods, and each one is too short for me, not going into enough character depth to hook me. I like my plot thicker and more centred somehow, I think.
I'm going to stop rambling now and find something more satisfying to read.
laurelkane's review against another edition
4.0
I hate that it took me so long to finish this book because I really enjoyed it. Just picked a bad time to start it. Makes you think about how much the past - particularly certain time periods - are romanticized by those who didn't live them... I felt tense and anxious through most of the book, not always in a good way. It was really impossible to tell what was going to happen and where Hollinghurst was going to take you next...
I saw an exhibit at the British Library last month called Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, in which this book was the only new artifact (unless you count a J.K. Rowling original manuscript) on display. It was a surprise to me considering it was sitting on my night stand half-read at home. And then when I got back and picked it up again, Paul Bryant (narrator for the middle sections of the novel) is doing research in the British Library. Weird.
I saw an exhibit at the British Library last month called Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, in which this book was the only new artifact (unless you count a J.K. Rowling original manuscript) on display. It was a surprise to me considering it was sitting on my night stand half-read at home. And then when I got back and picked it up again, Paul Bryant (narrator for the middle sections of the novel) is doing research in the British Library. Weird.
clem's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5