Scan barcode
A review by itsamess
The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
1.0
(⭐)
Books like that are the proof that impulsive shopping can work in a bakery, or at Primark, but when it comes to reading you should pay a little more attention.
The reason is very simple: if I buy a mediocre muffin I eat it in two bites and that's it; if I buy a scented candle and I never use it I have just wasted my money.
But I like to finish the book I read.
But this book was so painful I couldn't go on.
I have bought The Swimming Pool Library in a thrift shop for three reasons:
1) The fascinating and inexplicable title!
I mean, a swimming pool... library?
Don't books get wet?
2) The cover.
I know, "don't judge a book by its cover", but I can't resist to greek statues of male torsos. Blame my classic studies.
3) The plot on the back cover, because it promised me an ambiguous queer friendship between two aristocrats, bonding over the biography of the oldest one that the other has to write.
I was expecting something like Dorian Gray meeting The ghostwriter , but I found so many detailed description of sexual intercourse that I couldn't even follow who was having sex with whom.
Silly me, I didn't know that "the best book written about gay life" meant genitalia and locker rooms every two pages. All the other themes, like the discrimination of the black community, were completely left in the background if when the main character sees a black man he just thinks about how much he would like to have sex with him.
Same with the biography.
Such a waste of a potential great story.
Books like that are the proof that impulsive shopping can work in a bakery, or at Primark, but when it comes to reading you should pay a little more attention.
The reason is very simple: if I buy a mediocre muffin I eat it in two bites and that's it; if I buy a scented candle and I never use it I have just wasted my money.
But I like to finish the book I read.
But this book was so painful I couldn't go on.
I have bought The Swimming Pool Library in a thrift shop for three reasons:
1) The fascinating and inexplicable title!
I mean, a swimming pool... library?
Don't books get wet?
2) The cover.
I know, "don't judge a book by its cover", but I can't resist to greek statues of male torsos. Blame my classic studies.
3) The plot on the back cover, because it promised me an ambiguous queer friendship between two aristocrats, bonding over the biography of the oldest one that the other has to write.
I was expecting something like Dorian Gray meeting The ghostwriter , but I found so many detailed description of sexual intercourse that I couldn't even follow who was having sex with whom.
Silly me, I didn't know that "the best book written about gay life" meant genitalia and locker rooms every two pages. All the other themes, like the discrimination of the black community, were completely left in the background if when the main character sees a black man he just thinks about how much he would like to have sex with him.
Same with the biography.
Such a waste of a potential great story.