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The Line of Beauty

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The effusive press comments quoted on the cover and flyleaf of the paperback edition of Alan Hollinghurst's THE LINE OF BEAUTY are totally correct in everything they actually say; they merely fail to mention one of the most important aspects of the book. Hollinghurst writes brilliantly about life among the movers and shakers of Margaret Thatcher's London in the early 1980s. His ability to portray his characters, as one critic puts it, "from just an inch to the left" of how they would see themselves is masterly, and the result is something like the portraits of Goya, a flattering likeness with just a hint of satire. Hollinghurst has perfect pitch when it comes to the social sensibilities and small hypocrisies of the well-bred. As a lineal descendant of Trollope, James, and Forster, he is a well-deserved winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

But none of the reviews quoted in the book mention the gay sex, which is pervasive and often explicitly physical. By portraying the narrator of the book, Nick Guest, as a gay man in an ostensibly straight world, Hollinghurst achieves an oblique angle on the people he observes, moving considerably more than an inch from the axis on which they would ideally see themselves. The glamorous life is glimpsed through a foreground that straight readers might find far from glamorous, especially when it deals with bodily interactions. Ultimately, this becomes essential to the plot, but for a long time it seems merely an authorial device. It is difficult to know whether the author sees these elements as a heightening of the sexual charge, or whether they are deliberately introduced as an antidote to romanticism, and as much an emblem of decadence as the increasingly frequent use of "charlie" (cocaine) by the narrator and his friends. Certainly, the secrecy practised by other characters in the story who have not come out as Nick has done, does seem to point up the falsity of the world in which they cannot admit their preferences.

Not that Nick needs the difference in sexuality to give him detachment. He is presented as a talented boy from a middle-class background who has made some upper-crust friends while at Oxford, so becomes a kind of permanent guest in their lives after college. [This has much in common with my own background, and it was a curious experience to find one of my own Oxbridge friends of this kind, not named but clearly identifiable, appearing as a minor character in the book!] While Nick is clearly thrilled to have been adopted into this world, he remains subtly an outsider, but with an acuteness of perception to compensate for his lack of belonging. His social position is not so very different from that of Kazuo Ichiguro's hero in the first part of WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS -- a peculiarly English awkwardness which both writers capture very well.

The title, THE LINE OF BEAUTY, comes from Hogarth, and refers to the particular elegance of an ogival double-curve. It is emblematic of the genuine aesthetic understanding that is Nick's most appealing quality for this particular reader; the passages talking about art, literature, and music are perceptive and beautifully written. But art is also seen as the province of the rich, who can afford it but don't necessarily appreciate it. As the book goes on, there is increasing emphasis on art objects in a mannerist or rococo phase, seen surely as symbols of decadence, where art is "just make-believe for rich people," as one of the characters says. But the phrase also stands for that fatal line of attraction that leads from one love object to another, or towards some ideal of the beautiful life, that comes crashing down on the characters' heads at the end of this social comedy which turns out to have been a tragedy after all.

Hollinghurst is quoted as having said that if you come to this book looking for your normal sort of "fall from grace" story, you will be disappointed.

He's right.

Hollinghurst has also said that he is more interested in analyzing characters, in protraying them vividly, than in populating his books with people you are likely to identify with or actually care about.

He's right.

Many people have described Hollinghurst as a new genius of prose, as a writer of skill that is long missing in novels from any part of the world.

They're right.

So what's wrong with The Line of Beauty? Not much, but what IS wrong, like a tiny microbe or virus, seems to infect the whole thing.

Read with an eye on the craft of the words, this book is absolutely stunning. Hollinghurst's abilities as a novelist are truly astounding. Even the rather lurid and not particularly tasteful sexual escapades of the novel are crafted with a precision and glory that keep them from wallowing in the muck of which they are made. The affairs, the drugs, the betrayals and the promiscuous, anonymous trysts -- at heart they are what they are, but carved out with Hollinghurst's pen, they become more than that.

Unfortunately, not MUCH more than that.

The deeper meanings, the symbols of the 80s fall from grace, the metaphors woven into the events, these are all admirable evidences of a fine talent, but in the end, the novel seems to stumble over its own style, it clutches at its own class.

During a debate over music, Nick muses this about Strauss: "What the problem was was this colossal redundancy, the squandering of brilliant technique on cheap material, the sense that the moral nerves had been cut, leaving the great bloated body to a life of valueless excess." This phrase could equally apply to the book in which it is found.

At its heart, the book claims to be about a search for beauty in all its forms. Hollinghurst has said that Nick, the timid protagonist, comes to a realization that the outer beauty of the priviledged men and women with whom he lives disguises a deeper moral ugliness. I found it odd that he would mention beauty of a moral nature, since, in this novel, there really is none, either of a conservative, relativistic, religious, or liberal nature. Nick, caught up in his life of drugs and unchecked sexual hunger, doesn't prove himself to be any more or less beautiful than those people whom he analyzes and with whom he is ultimately disillusioned.

Even if you were to approach this book from the plane of one looking for a totally intellectual experience -- the realm of the observer observing, not judging or conspiring with the story or characters, but simply taking the events and people as they are presented by the almost flawless prose -- well, even then, the sum total of the events turns out to be rather facile, and even the opposite of what it intends. In spite of the gorgeous writing -- Hollinghurst's ability to describe almost anything with a grandiose and supreme ease of grace -- in spite of that, the book itself borders on being rather ugly.

Don't get me wrong. I do not make this assessment because the book is about homosexuality, or political scandals, or the dark deeds of the overpriviledged. I make this assessment because, in the end, Hollinghurst's tale does not rise above its subject matter, even if the writing itself does.

For those of you interested in literature, interested in a reawakening of the style of fine writing and pure form, this book will be a treat, but in the end, is more like a fancy, overpriced appetizer that leaves you wanting much much more.

LINE OF BEAUTY is a fine piece of writing; I wish I could accomplish something nearly as good. It was also a difficult read for me because Hollinghurst provides so little relief from the hollowness of main character's life -- from everyone's lives, really. I know he intends to represent the era, and I have a high tolerance for bleak (meaning that I often adore it); but nothing works without the benefit of contrast, and this is a one-note symphony. I'm glad I read it, but I didn't learn anything, and it left me feeling uniquely depressed. Perhaps that was the writer's intent.

"The Line of Beauty" is the first novel I've read by Alan Hollinghurst and having just finished it I'll make a beeline to read his others. Every chapter of this book is a sheer delight.

There are few authors who can move a book at such a torturedly slow pace and still manage a success. The key to "The Line of Beauty" lies in the detail....Hollinghurst unfolds his characters with enormous pathos, keeping their quotes brief and allowing his observations about them to become expanded. Their is a dryness to his writing that seems endemic of British authors but remaining in that style allows the flavor of his characters to come through with great shades of color.

As told through the eyes of the protagonist, Nick, Hollinghurst is able to steer him through a feel that combines an Edwardian England with the present. Nick grows up, to be sure, but he does so in a wafting way, sensitive to the world and his growing self-awareness. If Nick wears rose-colored glasses in the beginning, he has neatly discarded them at the end.

"The Line of Beauty" is really a book about connections...connections in a changing world of friends, lovers, family, illness and death. There is a general sadness that accompanies this book, as it should. Alan Hollinghurst reminds us, through the seriousness of Nick's story, how tenuous we all are in each other's care, no matter what our "standing" is in society... and how far we still have to go.

When readers finish Alan Hollinghurst's latest novel, The Line of Beauty, they will easily see why it has just won the Booker Prize. Hollinghurst, in his previous novels has made a career out of portraying particular sides of gay life - the incessant partying, the drugs, the selfishness, the bitchiness, and the unremitting need for sex, as his characters search out desire in public toilets, bars, sex clubs, and late night clubs. Many of his characters - while candid and honest - have never been particularly likable, and the author's portrayal of them has often been far from flattering.

In the Line of Beauty, Hollinghurst continues with his hedonistic themes, but his scope is also much boarder and his canvas a lot larger. This is an exquisitely executed and scorchingly candid work, where Hollinghurst's characters are eclectic, funny and are a maddening assortment of people who are all restlessly trying to navigate their way through Margaret Thatcher's mid-eighties Britain where capitalism, opulence, and class envy reigned supreme.

The story begins in 1983 and centers on the young twenty-year-old Nick Guest as he becomes intertwined with the Fedden family and their luminous world of money and privilege. Gerald Fedden is a Tory Member of Parliament and is basking in the glory of Thatcher's economic policies; he lives with Rachel, his wife, and his two children, Catherine and Toby in a vast garden-filled estate called Kensington Park Gardens in Notting Hill. Nick studied with Toby, and has just come down from Oxford to London to distractingly do a doctorate on Henry James. While coming from a provincial, middle class background - his father is a humble antiques dealer - Nick is welcomed into the Fedden family like a type of surrogate son and over time, he becomes a kind of minder to the neurotic, troubled Catherine.

Nick enthusiastically partakes of the family's lavish parties and political dinners, and tries to impress them in their somewhat facile discussions on literature and art. He tries his best to promote civility amongst their affluent boredom, and entrusted with their secrets, he inevitably sketches their upper-class English ghastliness. But Nick's unsure of his footing in this opulent, affluent looking-glass world, and as he gazes hopefully into the gilt arch of the hall mirror, the young, distracted man finds the mirror reluctant to give its approval. Nick constantly has to remind himself that he is doing this all for pleasure.

When Nick meets Leo, a black cockney, after secretly answering a personal advertisement, the trusting, blushful, and unworldly virgin, is introduced to lusty sex and gay life. As a young man Nick feels the wrong kind of irony, the wrong knowledge for gay life, but later as he settles into his new family, a sense of security takes hold. A craving deepens in front of him and he discovers the "lovely teamwork of drugs and drink." Much of the later part of the novel involves his relationship with Wani, a long-lashed Lebanese millionaire playboy whose family represent the new, well-heeled class. While working as a creative consultant on Wani's new magazine, Ogee - named after the curve that is Hogarth's line of beauty - Nick is introduced to a world of non-stop threesomes, moneyed decadence, and cocaine-fueled days and nights.

Nicks life of excess builds to a virtuoso scene when Prime Minister Thatcher - who is referred to as "The Lady" and is much anticipated throughout the novel - finally attends a party at the Feddens' house. Wearing a bejeweled jacket that makes her look like a "country and western singer," she finds herself innocently dancing with a coked-up, out of it Nick. Nicks sumptuous life, however, soon takes a turn for the worst as dark secrets are unveiled and he eventually discovers the ruthlessness of his masters, the viciousness of class loyalty, and the ferocious homophobia of the Thatcherite Tories.

With a sly, feline wit, The Line of Beauty is undoubtedly Hollinghurst's finest, not only in the breadth of its ambition but also in its intricacies of observation and expression. He presents subtle interpretations of the world of those who think they are "born to rule" and his attention to drawing room dialogue is unsurpassed - there are lots of droll scenes where the author shows his flair for describing the tiniest social shenanigans. The novel is a rich, elegant and superb comedy of manners, and while never didactic, it's always ironic. Undoubtedly, The Line of Beauty is destined to become a giant masterpiece of modern literature. Mike Leonard November 04.

Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, and the class culture wars, the revolution of the sexes, the social/moral setting of the 80's and the advent of AIDS is impeccably set down in Alan Hollinghurst's novel "In The Line Of Beauty". It is quite easy to understand how Mr. Hollinghurst won The Booker Prize with this novel. It is illuminating; the characters are riveting and so definitive in their persona. The time, the homes, the gossip, the age of the Gays is so well set. I loved this book, and the last chapter was the fitting ending. I do want to know more: how is Nick getting on? Will Toby marry and Wani, is he ok?

Nick Guest is the central character is this novel. He is invited to live with his college friend Toby and his family in Notting Hill while he completes his graduate degree. Toby's father, Gerald Fedden, has been elected as a Member of Parliament. Rachel, his perfect and lovely wife, is the center of the universe. Catherine, the daughter has a mental disturbance, and it is up to Nick to look after her. This is his job, so to speak.

Nick is gay and his several gay friends open up the life of the homosexual in Thatcher's England. The life of the gay man, the sex and the hidden dangers are revealed in ever so sleek a manner. We meet the gay society, the closed events and never spoken words of love of men for men. Women have a place here, but only as the appendage of the man. One of the more interesting characters is Wani, the son of a very rich Lebanese business man. He plays a straight man with a fianc'e, but secretly gay, paying his way through life and having the most beautiful and lovely of men. His secret life comes undone by the media of the day, and in this manner the lives of all come to a conclusion.

Alan Hollinghurst is a marvelous writer-he has been able to express the satire of the day in a most eloquent way. We are drawn into the life of the gay man, and the richness of the life of a family who have access to Parliament. We meet the people who are "in" and the people who never will be. We like most of them, celebrate with them all and share the misery of the masses. This is an extraordinary book in a way. It captures the essence of us all through the lives of people we come to know.
Highly recommended. prisrob

I generally have no difficulty writing reviews. With most books, you're leaning toward like/love, or hate/annoyed. But having just finished The Line of Beauty, I'm left feeling fairly neutral, but very satisfied.

And that's saying a lot when you've read 400+ very dense pages. It's brilliantly written, but since it's mostly an extended narrative of the daily affairs, affairs of all sorts, private and public, gay and straight, business and social, of the British upper crust, it's not exactly a page turner. It can be truly tedious at times. Reading it in bed WILL put you to sleep. I started this in Japan about a month ago, and I just sat in a coffee shop in Manila for about 5 hours to finish up the last 150 or so pages. In fact, this is definitely a coffee-shop book. You need to be alert and undisturbed to be able to unpack the writing, and to stay in it long enough to get absorbed.

Although it's a challenging read, it's usually enjoyable; it definitely deserved the Man Booker Prize. Hollinghurst is one of those writers who makes you stop and reread. You earmark pages and note sections and particular turns of phrase that you know you'll want to revisit. Even when you know you can skip entire pages of details, you don't. You're not reading this book to be taken on a rollercoaster ride, you're reading it for the scenery. And the scenery is often beautiful.

This book is, at heart, an analysis and account of the hypocrisy of the rich and political. At least that's what I read from it. Hollinghurst has two main themes: the day-to-day life of those on the moral and typically pompous high ground, and the sordid back-room details of sex, drugs and other excesses. The brilliant point of this book is that these themes run in parallel throughout the development of the story without ever crossing paths. Characters exists in both worlds, a point increasingly revealed as the story progresses, but they are kept apart, as if going through a door that lets through people, but not their secrets. In the end, when the walls come down and these two worlds collide, the realizations brought forth are in no way preachy. And that in itself shows an intelligence and skill that goes beyond "good writing."

If you're looking for a quick read on the holidays, then this book is probably not the one to choose. But if you are in the mood to be challenged, amused and engaged; if you just feel like reading some incredibly well written prose, I'd highly recommend this book.

Hollinghurst is quoted as having said that if you come to this book looking for your normal sort of "fall from grace" story, you will be disappointed.

He's right.

Hollinghurst has also said that he is more interested in analyzing characters, in protraying them vividly, than in populating his books with people you are likely to identify with or actually care about.

He's right.

Many people have described Hollinghurst as a new genius of prose, as a writer of skill that is long missing in novels from any part of the world.

They're right.

So what's wrong with The Line of Beauty? Not much, but what IS wrong, like a tiny microbe or virus, seems to infect the whole thing.

Read with an eye on the craft of the words, this book is absolutely stunning. Hollinghurst's abilities as a novelist are truly astounding. Even the rather lurid and not particularly tasteful sexual escapades of the novel are crafted with a precision and glory that keep them from wallowing in the muck of which they are made. The affairs, the drugs, the betrayals and the promiscuous, anonymous trysts -- at heart they are what they are, but carved out with Hollinghurst's pen, they become more than that.

Unfortunately, not MUCH more than that.

The deeper meanings, the symbols of the 80s fall from grace, the metaphors woven into the events, these are all admirable evidences of a fine talent, but in the end, the novel seems to stumble over its own style, it clutches at its own class.

During a debate over music, Nick muses this about Strauss: "What the problem was was this colossal redundancy, the squandering of brilliant technique on cheap material, the sense that the moral nerves had been cut, leaving the great bloated body to a life of valueless excess." This phrase could equally apply to the book in which it is found.

At its heart, the book claims to be about a search for beauty in all its forms. Hollinghurst has said that Nick, the timid protagonist, comes to a realization that the outer beauty of the priviledged men and women with whom he lives disguises a deeper moral ugliness. I found it odd that he would mention beauty of a moral nature, since, in this novel, there really is none, either of a conservative, relativistic, religious, or liberal nature. Nick, caught up in his life of drugs and unchecked sexual hunger, doesn't prove himself to be any more or less beautiful than those people whom he analyzes and with whom he is ultimately disillusioned.

Even if you were to approach this book from the plane of one looking for a totally intellectual experience -- the realm of the observer observing, not judging or conspiring with the story or characters, but simply taking the events and people as they are presented by the almost flawless prose -- well, even then, the sum total of the events turns out to be rather facile, and even the opposite of what it intends. In spite of the gorgeous writing -- Hollinghurst's ability to describe almost anything with a grandiose and supreme ease of grace -- in spite of that, the book itself borders on being rather ugly.

Don't get me wrong. I do not make this assessment because the book is about homosexuality, or political scandals, or the dark deeds of the overpriviledged. I make this assessment because, in the end, Hollinghurst's tale does not rise above its subject matter, even if the writing itself does.

For those of you interested in literature, interested in a reawakening of the style of fine writing and pure form, this book will be a treat, but in the end, is more like a fancy, overpriced appetizer that leaves you wanting much much more.

Call it the British "Angels in America" minus the angels, but Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty" can stand on its own, even when compared to Tony Kushner's brilliant play. Both works share a lot in common: they are set in the 80s when the world was changing in a strange way, AIDS has just become the issue, and both have its country politcs in the background (USA: Ronald Regan; UK: Margaret Tatcher).

The 2004 MAN Booker Prize winner is a novel that takes a little time to grabs one attention -- but once it does so, it is hard to put it down. It covers a couple of years in the lives of a group of people, all related to Nick Guest, young man who has moved to the elegant house in Notting Hill that belongs to the parents of one of his best friends. This family sort of becomes his second family.

But Nick is never really connected to the Feddens, for many reasons. One of them is that they are wealthy and futile, whereas he is not. Another one is the fact they never really deal with his homosexuality. They seem to cope that but never accept it. But politics in England in the 80s play such a major role in the narrative the homosexuality has a supporting part sometimes.

The book focus on is the climate of giddy success among well-to-do Tories between the electoral victories of 1983 and 1987. The patriarch Gerald Fedden has just entered Parliament and wants to fulfill another political ambition: to host the PM at home for a party. Eventually when it happens Hollinghurst delivers some of the best pages of social and cultural delight and critic of his novel. For pages and pages he teases his reader in the best possible way, announcing that something big will happen -- but one can never be aware of what will happen. One critic has wisely compared the appearance of "The Lady" to the presence of Kurtz in ''Heart of Darkness,'' who both are invisible until near the end.

Hollinghurst has a special obsession for beauty and its forms -- and this is totally explicit in the title of the book. But his prose also has its own beauty. The writer's choose of words is remarkable, as well as the way he builds his sentences. At the same time, Hollighurst gambles with another of his main themes: Henry James. Nick is working on a thesis about this writer, which turns out to be a good excuse to inject some Jamesian comments throughout the narrative.

Many readers maybe shocked with the honesty that sexuality is dealt with. This concern only enhances the experience of reading the narrative. Nick's sexually naivety and awakening is believable and never gratuitous. And all the characters have enough personality and humanity to fill a whole book on them.

Hollinghurst won a deserved Booker Prize with his novel, which has much more consistence and smartness than last year's "Vernon God Little". Giving the Prize to "The Line of Beauty" brings back the hope that it is indeed a literary prize and not just a fashion contest.

Elegantly written with salvage details of sex, THE LINE OF BEAUTY however, is not a gay fiction, but a literary piece that portrays a political period through the eyes of a gay protagonist. It embodies the grand metaphor of what Thatcher did to Britain in the 80s and also the personal temptation-pulsed journey of Nick Guest. It reminisces the lasting sense of unhappiness and dismay and how awful Maggie's Britain was. In a wider sense, the novel is an oblique look, one that is both imaginative and interesting as it approaches the sense of forlornness through the eyes of someone like Nick who was absorbed by it and thought it was all rather glamorous. The novel slowly unveils through Nick's journey to relationship, with his lovers and that with the MP household. He is rather weak and easily led but morally pliable. He could be wholly corrupted but he knows his limits and is prune to many temptations, which seem to characterize the novel's times. The novel exposes to the full the idea of an absolute instability and frailty when the country seems to lose its common sense.

THE LINE OF BEAUTY is a significant novel in its historical and political essence. It is a painstaking, disconcerting, and savage delineation of the Thatcher years as seen through the tale of Nick, who finds himself living in the attic room of the stately mansion of ascendant Tory politician Gerald Fedden and his family. Nick is a just-coming-out Oxford graduate and is secretly in love with Fedden's straight son Toby. An affair with a young black clerk gives Nick his debut romance, but also alerts him with lurking crisis of his gay identity. He feels he might look like a person with no friends. He is extremely sensitive to anything that might be said. He feels he has the wrong kind of irony, the mistaken knowledge, the inappropriate sarcasm for gay life. With a tinge of innocence and careful curiosity that will later whittle away in time, he is faintly shocked, among other emotions and interest and excitement, at the idea of a male couple.

It is later secret affair with a millionaire, a film-maker, his college friend Wani that changes Nick's life drastically and rids all his boyish innocence and curiosity on aspects of being gay. A handsome Lebanese and the only son to an old-valued man who owns a supermarket chain, Wani, with an indefeasible family instinct, exacts totally secrecy in his affair with Nick. It is not sure whether he pretends to be straight or chooses to keep a low-profile with his affair. To him, for sure, his family is as natural as sex and as irrefutable in its demands. His "fiancée", a female companion whom he pays, is just a front. Everything Wani and Hick do: the surreal montage of sexual conspiracy and the drug escapade is clandestine that Wani has slipped away into a world his father has never imagined.

Though Nick might have entertained the thrill of wandering away from strict truth, tricking people and longing for scandalous acclaim of the secret affair, he finds himself compelled to tell the truth, and to vocalize all the mischievous beauty. The deep connection between them is so surreptitious that at times it is difficult to believe it exists. The cultivation of their love requires indifference. It is an intuition blinked away by its own absurdity, the very element that charms and hypnotizes them. Wani's strict discretion originates from his father casting high hope on him, the only son, after his brother was killed in a car accident in Beirut. Wani has shouldered that burden of family mourning since childhood and seems more touching, more glamorous and more forgivable at the revelation of the mishap. It therefore aggrandizes the affair, which becomes more convincing not to be mistaken for the squeeze of guilt.

The novel carefully winds down towards a shocking and forceful denouement in which the entire political decade is expertly drawn as a human sham. Regardless of the lucid elaboration of sex and drugs, which might have raised highbrow of literary elite, the novel has scooped the Booker Prize. The explicit physical content in THE LINE OF BEAUTY is nothing compared to Hollinghurst's 1988 debut THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY, which is riddled of even more explicit scenes all the way through it. The gay protagonist in the novel of current interest, however, does not isolate himself in a strange way and whose contact with the world is not entirely sexual. THE LINE OF BEAUTY is clearly about things other than being gay: a social commentary perhaps and it almost becomes somewhat irritating if it is used to imply that that is all there is to the book. Merely looking at it as gay fiction will not do justice of its fine writing and buried meaning.