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A review by jenn756
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
5.0
I loved this, its tone captures perfectly the blowsy bumptious 1980s. The hero, Nick Guest is seduced by beauty – beauty in objects and more dangerously the superficial beauty of people. One of the characters, Catherine, challenges him to look beyond physical beauty into the beauty of the character within, but Nick to his downfall doesn’t – or can’t.
After his graduation from Oxford he moves to London and begins mixing in society circles – its like the darker companion to `Four Weddings and a Funeral’. He moves into the house of the rising Conservative Minister Gerald Fedden as a sort of companion to his adult children. It was a time when Conservatives revelled in their excess wealth and aristocratic connections (now they cover them up!) Hollinghurst describes perfectly the exclusive town house of the Feddens which backs onto beautiful London locked gardens, and the French chateau they have as a holiday home and all the glittering parties (Margaret Thatcher even makes a cameo appearance).
Nick is gay, at a time when gay people were just gaining a toehold in popular acceptance. He begins a relationship with the wildly beautiful and amoral Wani, heir to a supermarket fortune. You despair really that someone as intelligent as Nick could fall for someone as vapid as Wani. The gay sex scenes are, as my Mum might have said, `a bit ripe’… The spectre of AIDS is just round the corner and the second half of the book deals the devastating fallout.
I’m not convinced in real life the Feddens would have tolerated Nick living with them as long as he did, but I suppose Hollinghurst had to play it that way for dramatic effect. Its interesting that as long as life is on the up Nick’s gayness is tolerated but as soon as trouble strikes the old prejudices return. Nick realises the people he thought were friends were never truly friends at all.
Worth reading alone for the beautiful language and lingering descriptions of 1980s London.
After his graduation from Oxford he moves to London and begins mixing in society circles – its like the darker companion to `Four Weddings and a Funeral’. He moves into the house of the rising Conservative Minister Gerald Fedden as a sort of companion to his adult children. It was a time when Conservatives revelled in their excess wealth and aristocratic connections (now they cover them up!) Hollinghurst describes perfectly the exclusive town house of the Feddens which backs onto beautiful London locked gardens, and the French chateau they have as a holiday home and all the glittering parties (Margaret Thatcher even makes a cameo appearance).
Nick is gay, at a time when gay people were just gaining a toehold in popular acceptance. He begins a relationship with the wildly beautiful and amoral Wani, heir to a supermarket fortune. You despair really that someone as intelligent as Nick could fall for someone as vapid as Wani. The gay sex scenes are, as my Mum might have said, `a bit ripe’… The spectre of AIDS is just round the corner and the second half of the book deals the devastating fallout.
I’m not convinced in real life the Feddens would have tolerated Nick living with them as long as he did, but I suppose Hollinghurst had to play it that way for dramatic effect. Its interesting that as long as life is on the up Nick’s gayness is tolerated but as soon as trouble strikes the old prejudices return. Nick realises the people he thought were friends were never truly friends at all.
Worth reading alone for the beautiful language and lingering descriptions of 1980s London.