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dickon_edwards 's review for:
The Sparsholt Affair
by Alan Hollinghurst
I was fortunate enough to be sent an advance proof of this, just in time for my MA dissertation on music in the novels of Hollinghurst... Very grateful to Picador for that.
As of 15 Oct 2017, I've written a more thorough review for Birkbeck University's Contemporary Literature website. It features some detective work on my part, regarding the real-life images in the novel:
http://www.ccl.bbk.ac.uk/pics-or-it-didnt-happen-alan-hollinghursts-the-sparsholt-affair/
Briefly, I liked it a lot. Though I do like Hollinghurst a lot, regardless. Any Hollinghurst novel is a work of art: I feel my brain thanking me whenever I read one.
Having read all 6 of AH's novels, I'd put The Sparsholt Affair as my 4th favourite, the list being:
1) The Line of Beauty
2) The Spell
3) The Swimming-Pool Library
4) The Sparsholt Affair
5) The Stranger's Child
6) The Folding Star
The Line of Beauty is still AH's masterpiece, in terms of being stuffed with beautiful sentences, witty observations, satire and symbolism. It would be the one I'd direct AH newcomers to: it's up there with The Great Gatsby in terms of literary perfection. The Swimming-Pool Library is important in terms of queer literary history. The Spell seems quite light at first, but I've found myself growing increasingly fond of it. It's also the novel that brought out John Updike's latent homophobia in his review at the time: he ended up reviewing the trouble with homosexuality full stop. Perhaps The Spell needs to go into a Goodreads list: 'Books That Reveal Bigotry In Reviewers'.
Anyway, The Sparsholt Affair seems to be the second movement in AH's second symphony. That's if one takes (from his interviews) the idea that his first four novels were all movements in a first symphony, one framed by gay male characters in the 1980s and 1990s (one character from SPL turns up in LOB, proving the existence of a Hollingverse). This second symphony is made up, so far, of The Stranger's Child and The Sparsholt Affair. They're both five-part books, each part dipping into a different historical period. Hollinghurst's perspectives are much more fluid than in his first 4 books: the core POV might suddenly shift to one character for one or two scenes only, as it does with the servant boy in The Stranger's Child. One feels that these two latter novels are more about the way some art and ideas can last, while people and reputations come and go.
In fact, The Sparsholt Affair's first part, in the 1940s, is told from the POV of - shock horror! - a heterosexual man. When novelists become well-known, the danger might be that they only become well-known for doing the same sort of thing. Are they worried about repeating themselves? Or do they need to keep up the Great Project? Sarah Waters moved away from lesbian protagonists: I'm sure there's burning discussions elsewhere as to whether this was a good move for her. Perhaps, I dunno, Lee Child should start writing about introspective gay men who just want to listen to Radio 3, and Hollinghurst should take over Jack Reacher for a while. Discuss.
That said, the 1940s narrator in TSA is often mistaken for being gay - something that gestures at the bisexuality and ambiguous masculinity also hinted at in The Stranger's Child. David Sparsholt himself is a frustratingly vague character, who may (or may not) have been 'gay for pay' on at least two occasions. His vagueness is obviously intended, but, as with the ending of The Stranger's Child, I sometimes wish Hollinghurst would reward his readers with a little more revelation into the answers behind his novels' mysteries. It needn't detract from the journey.
A thought on influence: AH is a self-confessed admirer of the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn. Certainly, as the decades change and children take over the main perspectives, the device of renaming a former protagonist as 'X's father' (keep up at the back!) felt very much like a nod to St Aubyn.
Another thought: the cover of this novel should really be a crumpled pencil sketch of a muscular male torso. [Edit: I've changed my mind about this! The current cover makes sense, and is certainly very bookshop friendly. Light-coloured covers attract fingerprints...]
One shock: some characters discuss porn on Tumblr and WhatsApp. There's also a young character who is a self-confessed gerontophile (prefers older men to younger) Another Goodreads list right there. Or even a sub-genre.
As of 15 Oct 2017, I've written a more thorough review for Birkbeck University's Contemporary Literature website. It features some detective work on my part, regarding the real-life images in the novel:
http://www.ccl.bbk.ac.uk/pics-or-it-didnt-happen-alan-hollinghursts-the-sparsholt-affair/
Briefly, I liked it a lot. Though I do like Hollinghurst a lot, regardless. Any Hollinghurst novel is a work of art: I feel my brain thanking me whenever I read one.
Having read all 6 of AH's novels, I'd put The Sparsholt Affair as my 4th favourite, the list being:
1) The Line of Beauty
2) The Spell
3) The Swimming-Pool Library
4) The Sparsholt Affair
5) The Stranger's Child
6) The Folding Star
The Line of Beauty is still AH's masterpiece, in terms of being stuffed with beautiful sentences, witty observations, satire and symbolism. It would be the one I'd direct AH newcomers to: it's up there with The Great Gatsby in terms of literary perfection. The Swimming-Pool Library is important in terms of queer literary history. The Spell seems quite light at first, but I've found myself growing increasingly fond of it. It's also the novel that brought out John Updike's latent homophobia in his review at the time: he ended up reviewing the trouble with homosexuality full stop. Perhaps The Spell needs to go into a Goodreads list: 'Books That Reveal Bigotry In Reviewers'.
Anyway, The Sparsholt Affair seems to be the second movement in AH's second symphony. That's if one takes (from his interviews) the idea that his first four novels were all movements in a first symphony, one framed by gay male characters in the 1980s and 1990s (one character from SPL turns up in LOB, proving the existence of a Hollingverse). This second symphony is made up, so far, of The Stranger's Child and The Sparsholt Affair. They're both five-part books, each part dipping into a different historical period. Hollinghurst's perspectives are much more fluid than in his first 4 books: the core POV might suddenly shift to one character for one or two scenes only, as it does with the servant boy in The Stranger's Child. One feels that these two latter novels are more about the way some art and ideas can last, while people and reputations come and go.
In fact, The Sparsholt Affair's first part, in the 1940s, is told from the POV of - shock horror! - a heterosexual man. When novelists become well-known, the danger might be that they only become well-known for doing the same sort of thing. Are they worried about repeating themselves? Or do they need to keep up the Great Project? Sarah Waters moved away from lesbian protagonists: I'm sure there's burning discussions elsewhere as to whether this was a good move for her. Perhaps, I dunno, Lee Child should start writing about introspective gay men who just want to listen to Radio 3, and Hollinghurst should take over Jack Reacher for a while. Discuss.
That said, the 1940s narrator in TSA is often mistaken for being gay - something that gestures at the bisexuality and ambiguous masculinity also hinted at in The Stranger's Child. David Sparsholt himself is a frustratingly vague character, who may (or may not) have been 'gay for pay' on at least two occasions. His vagueness is obviously intended, but, as with the ending of The Stranger's Child, I sometimes wish Hollinghurst would reward his readers with a little more revelation into the answers behind his novels' mysteries. It needn't detract from the journey.
A thought on influence: AH is a self-confessed admirer of the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn. Certainly, as the decades change and children take over the main perspectives, the device of renaming a former protagonist as 'X's father' (keep up at the back!) felt very much like a nod to St Aubyn.
Another thought: the cover of this novel should really be a crumpled pencil sketch of a muscular male torso. [Edit: I've changed my mind about this! The current cover makes sense, and is certainly very bookshop friendly. Light-coloured covers attract fingerprints...]
One shock: some characters discuss porn on Tumblr and WhatsApp. There's also a young character who is a self-confessed gerontophile (prefers older men to younger) Another Goodreads list right there. Or even a sub-genre.