disappointing, weak plot, good background

I was disappointed with "The Line of Beauty", perhaps because all the praise and prizes made me think of it as of a truly exceptional novel. Well, it isn't exceptional and, in fact, the plot is very weak.

The novel is set mainly in London, with a little excursion to France. The time frame is 1983 to 1987. The main protagonist, Nick Guest, is a gay Oxford graduate, writing a dissertation on Henry James, who lives as a house guest with the family of his college friend, Toby Fedden. The Feddens are portraited as the upper-class, conservative family, with Toby's father, Gerald, being a Member of Parliament, the mother, Rachel, coming from old money, and the sister, Catherine, suffering from (imaginative?) bipolar disorder.

The depiction of the 80s in London is very interesting and probably accurate, with many sharp insights into the political and social situation of Great Britain. There is a fair amount of humor and the silhouettes of the characters are painted satirically, but this is just about as much as there is to it. The book reads like a gigantic, blown-up background sketch, and while it is true that it can be a good read for the people who are interested in that period (with great comparisons between social classes, examples being the Feddens, Nick family, and Leo's family), there is no real plot. Nothing, except parties and various social or political events, which drag on and on, happens until about 100 pages before the end, and even then it is not much and only what is to be expected. If anyone is interested in the drama of AIDS in the 80s, I would rather recommend "Angels in America".

Nick is a weak, pathetic main character, he is not likeable, rather despicable - he has a lot of potential, is intelligent, imaginative and sensitive, but he tries to achieve his aspirations by being, essentially, a parasite, and this has nothing to do with his being conscious of his sexual orientation, he is just this type of person, gay or not, he would be the same, and while the attitude of the Fedden family and surroundings to homosexualism is hypocritical (vide Gerald and Penny as opposed to Nick and Wani), and I was all the time wondering what else could he expect and why he is not independent - for years staying with people, basically on their charity. All this immediately (even without his Jamesian research) brings to mind the socialites out of Henry James's novels, but the effect is incomparable. The whole novel is summarized very well when Nick and Wani meet the potential producers of their movie, who criticize Nick's script - the remarks are very relevant to the whole of this novel.

I liked several characters - Catherine with her sharp tongue, observant eye and unexpected reactions, Penny (her last discussion with Nick is very good), Leo's family, and several minor personas who are rather funny, but I could not wait for the book to end and I wish I'd rather read something else instead.

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Britain's most literary gay author

Others have written well of this book. I simply wanted to add that I think Hollinghurst in general fills a niche in the gay fiction genre, in that he is first and foremost a richly talented writer with acute observational skills, and intensely intimate introspective capabilities (forgive the alliteration). That said his writing is also hot. He unabashedly explores the sexual lives of his characters, which makes him exquisitely modern and insouciant. Straight women friends of mine have enjoyed his work as much as my gay male friends precisely for this quality. Seldom does an avid reader come away from a novel with such a sense of satisfaction and intellectual fulfillment. Alan if you read this - we are all waiting for more.

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Slight

I didn't buy my copy off amazon but at the Pan bookshop in the Fulham road where I got an autographed first edition. It'll have good re-sale value. That's the best I can say about it. Alan Hollinghurst has already proven that he can write, but I was expecting something with alot more depth to it than this. Especially as the Booker judges had rewarded him for it. If you think the BBC adaptation was just giving you a taste of what you'll find in the novel, then you'll be disappointed as there is not much more to the book than was put on screen.
Nick Guest, the novel's central protagonist, moves to London to work at UCL and accepts accomodation from the family of his friend Toby Fedden. Despite Nick and Toby being such good friends Nick has never been to Toby's family home before the novel starts. Nick has a brief relationship with Leo Charles. Leo Charles introduces Nick to a friend of his,Pete, who owned an antique shop and this plot strand ends abruptly as though it was a half thought out idea. I was hoping Leo's family and friends would be drawn more vividly to get us out of the claustrophobia and boredome of the Fedden family home. There's the crux of it. The characters , and what they do here are very boring. It's very dull.
There is a narrowness to the London that Alan depicts. Here he rarely leaves the Fedden's place in Notting Hill, and the variety and changing social status of that area during the period is not described. I know from reading 'The Swimming Pool Library's innacurate description of walking from Mile End to St.Anne's Limehouse that Mr.Hollinghurst's knowledge of London is sketchy at best (he'd get lost east of the City without a guide, and he probably doesn't realise that south of the river is inhabited) but it is irksome to read a novel set in a city you know well and finding it so poorly represented. You need to get out more, Alan. Try again.

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