A review by jules_sunshine27
The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

2.0

This book was pretty much a let-down honestly. Its language choices and sentence structure were undoubtedly beautiful and intriguing, and those were the best aspects of the book. But I take issue with so much of the plot points and character development (or lack thereof). Not to mention the fact that the narrator’s prose and Nantwich’s journals are written in the same literary voice, which makes it very uninteresting and causes it to lack any kind of real dynamic between the two of them. Among all the flaws of this book, I think the oddest and most glaringly bad ones are that almost every single person the main character encounters is openly gay and incredibly promiscuous, and that Will B and Charles N are both disturbingly obsessed with black men... Their opinions and perspectives regarding this weird obsession unabashedly objectify black men, and it’s honestly just really unsettling and strange. There were a few lines in this book that I really enjoyed, and I did think that some of Will’s insights about the things and people around him were interesting, but overall this is not a very good book in my opinion. I think the most promising character was James, but William’s self-centered, arrogant attitude didn’t give him much time or obvious worth. Will pretty much uses every man he is with for his own sexual pleasure and selfishness, and while he does have a steady boyfriend for quite some time in the book, he periodically cheats on him almost always out of this wildly uncontrollable impulse, and then when he catches his boyfriend cheating on him he is furious and heartbroken... ?