A review by laurelkane
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

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.