|
The Line of Beauty |  | Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY USA/WALKER
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 21069
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
ASIN: B002TTICDC
Publication Date: December 17, 2008
| | |
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Interview with Alan Hollinghurst
 Alan Hollinghurst's extraordinarily rich novel The Line of Beauty. has garnered a new level of acclaim for the author after winning the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Hollinghurst speaks about his work in our interview.
Product Description
One can't get enough of Hollinghurst's sentences-If you value style, wit, and social satire in your reading, don't miss this elegant and passionate novel.-Washington Post Winner of 2004's Man Booker Prize for fiction and one of the most talked about books of the year, The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel about class, sex, and money that brings Thatcher's London alive. Nick Guest has moved in with the Feddens, a family whose patriarch is a conservative member of parliament. An innocent in matters of politics and money, Nick becomes caught up in the Feddens' world of parties and excess, as well as in his own private pursuit of beauty. Framed by the two general elections that returned Margaret Thatcher to power, The Line of Beauty unfurls through four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. A New York Times Bestseller (Extended) - A LA Times Bestseller List - A Book Sense National Bestseller - A Northern California Bestseller - A Sunday Times Bestseller List - A New York Times Notable Book of the Year And chosen as one of the best books of 2004 by: Entertainment Weekly - The Washington Post - The San Francisco Chronicle - The Seattle Times Newsday - Salon.com - The Boston Globe - The New York Sun - The Miami Herald - The Dallas Morning News - San Jose Mercury News - Publishers Weekly "A magnificent comedy of manners. Hollinghurst's alertness to the tiniest social and tonal shifts never slackens, and positively luxuriates in a number of unimprovably droll set pieces-[an] outstanding novel."-New York Times Book Review "Hollinghurst has placed his gay protagonist within a larger social context, and the result is his most tender and powerful novel to date, a sprawling and haunting elegy to the 1980s. A"-Entertainment Weekly "Mr. Hollinghurst's great gift as a novelist is for social satire as sharp and tra
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Lovely rendering of a young man learning to love and live in his 20s encompassing the bigger themes in 1980s London June 7, 2009
J. Bender (Jersey City, NJ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Line of Beauty... It's difficult to find words that do it justice. Nick Guest is a young man just out of Oxford, one who doesn't quite belong to that rarified world of his classmates, and who yearns for it in a way only someone who doesn't belong can. At the start of the book he has just moved in with one of his Oxford's classmate's family, the Feddens, in a gorgeous house in a posh part of London. Gerald Fedden, the patriarch, is a rich charismatic MP (though not titled) and his wife Rachel is elegant, serene, the daughter of an Earl, and a wonder to Nick. Their son, Toby, Nick's friend, is the picture of good-natured British privilege - he takes it all for granted and his simplicity is a foil to Nick's complexity. The Fedden's daughter Catherine is emotionally closest to Nick. She is self-destructive, an ex-cutter, and scorns the world her parents and brother so easily move in. Hollinghurst paints a stunning and absolutely exacting portrait of the world these characters inhabit and their interactions with each other. Nick meanwhile is also discovering his own sexuality and falls in love with a young man Leo during these formative years. The book occurs in three parts, skipping forward first 3 years and then 1 year, covering the formative years of Nick's life. This plot device is incredibly moving as it highlights the contrasts of Nick's younger self with how he changes throughout the years. As stated in the book's blurb, The Line of Beauty is a stunning examination of the issues of class, money, and sex, but it's also about beauty, the way beauty manifests itselfs and is heart-breakingly thrilling but ultimately fleeting. Beauty which is pure and shining in a brief moment of time. It is also that rare book that so perfectly captures the human condition - love, yearning, jealousy, self-loathing, fear, uncertainty, envy, lust, heartbreak, and grief.
On the Outside, Looking In April 19, 2008
Professor Donald Mitchell (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 97,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the biggest challenges of any novelist is to provide a perspective that's accessible to us and helpful in understanding what's being portrayed. Alan Hollinghurst has achieved remarkable results by stationing his narrator, Nick Guest, outside of all the worlds he inhabits. Guest is like a spirit rising amused over the action that can draw us a picture while recording every sound that's created or uttered.
Here are the worlds that Guest helps us explore:
-Tory MP life during the Thatcher years
-Young Oxford graduates looking for a place
-A young man exploring his homosexuality
-Wealthy British on the make for more
-Middle-aged married life
-Inner life of a young manic-depressive
The book's overall theme is about everyday hypocrisy and the large price that has to be paid by those who pretend to be other than what they are and believe.
The story evolves in three time periods: 1983, 1986, and 1987. In all three years, Nick Guest resides with the family of an Oxford friend where the father is a rising conservative MP. Nick has an unofficial role as low-cost lodger to keep on eye on the friend's troubled sister. The family knows that Nick is looking for a boy friend and is open about accepting his sexuality. The three years give us a chance to learn more about the characters and to see how their relationships change. The 1987 period brings all that had been known in private into public with large consequences for all.
The book is filled with great scenes where nuances of knowledge, awareness, perception, accent, and perspective separate and unite the characters. Often, contrasting scenes occur back-to-back so that the contrasts are even more obvious. You'll gain a deeper insight into British society than you could on your own.
Ultimately, I feel that a work of fiction must be judged by how successfully it takes you into a world you have never been in before and allows you to understand that world much better. Any novel that can help me understand what it's like to be gay during the AIDS epidemic while giving me a strong sense of Thatcher's leadership has to be pretty terrific because those dimensions are outside my experience and normal reading.
As a person who enjoys art, I was most impressed by the way that the ogee was worked into the story to provide a connecting metaphor for our common humanity.
Bravo!
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
| |
