A review by cojack
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

4.0

What an interesting book. It doesn't have much in the way of plot, but there's plenty of story around growing up gay in England in different generations. Hollinghurst also delves into the way many artists/misfits need to create their own communities and family-type structures. Father-child relationships feature strongly. This is a hard book to summarize. Hollinghurst writes beautifully. I tried to skim parts of this to get it read in time for book club, but I was too drawn in by his language to read quickly. The book has several passages that seem pointless overall, which is the main reason I knocked my rating down a star. Oh, and the jumps in time were jarring, especially in terms of keeping track of characters. It always took me 20 pages or so to get into each new section. Also, I think it’s odd to cover gay lives from 1940 to present without even mentioning AIDS. Maybe it was too big of a topic to touch on, but it was a glaring omission to me. Overall, it could have been tighter and have had a little more in the way of plot threads, but this was a great read. I have to dig into his previous works.