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The Line of Beauty
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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.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Hollinghurst's first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), won major acclaim and many awards. His latest novel engages similar themes--a young man new to both his sexuality and the manners of high society. Set in London during the early 1980s, the economy is booming, the Tories have just been swept into power, Margaret Thatcher is prime minister, and the country is awash in hope and excitement. Nick Guest, fresh out of Oxford, is staying in London with the Fedden family--whose son, Toby, was Nick's dearest friend at Oxford. The father, Gerald, is a newly elected conservative member of parliament and is infatuated with Thatcher, whom he calls "the Lady." Nick, by his proximity to the Feddens, attends swank parties, packed with MPs, cabinet ministers, and nobility, all of whom harbor the expectation that "the Lady" might appear at any minute. Meanwhile, Nick embarks on two love affairs--first with Leo, a young black London clerk, and later with Wani, a Lebanese millionaire and friend from Oxford. After nights of parties, drugs, sex, and snobbery, scandal--in which Nick plays an unwilling part-- visits the Fedden family. The material and social excesses of the 1980s are deftly portrayed in Hollinghurst's latest success. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
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3 von 3 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
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!
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!
26 von 34 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
Politisch sicherlich ein wichtiges Buch, weil ein klassisch schwuler Roman - mit einigen sehr sehr deutlichen Szenen - hier in den mainstream vordringt und den wichtigsten britischen Romanpreis bekommt. Inhaltlich eine klassische Abrechnung mit der Thatcher-Zeit in England, aber keineswegs auf besonders hohem Niveau (daß die Yuppies der 1980er verantwortungslos und geldgierig waren, ist keine neue Information). Stilistisch ähnelt "The Line of Beauty" eher den Kriminalromanen der mittleren Periode von Elizabeth George und Martha Grimes - die Akkoladen, die im Autor den neuen Henry James sehen, sind sicherlich unangebracht. Immerhin ist das Buch leicht lesbar. Das immer wieder als bewegend und bedeutend hervorgehobene Ende ist durchaus konventionell und vorhersehbar. Dennoch, es ist ein guter Roman - wenn auch nicht so gut und nicht auf so hohem literarischen Niveau wie sein Wettbewerber um den Booker Prize, Colm Toíbíns "The Master". In diesem geht es um Henry James und dessen Beziehungsunfähigkeit und Ästhetik, aber auch um dessen Schwulsen; interressanterweise promoviert der Protagonist von "Line of Beauty" über James und zitiert ihn häufig. Literaturtheoretisch sei für den deutschen Diskurs noch angemerkt, daß beide Romane von Technik und Stil her ganz und gar klassisch angelegt und durchgeführt sind und auch zwischen 1895 und 1935 hätten geschrieben werden können; deutlicher könnte die Abwendung der Gegenwartsliteratur von theorieinduzierten Ansätzen nicht sein.
24 von 35 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
Having read - and mostly enjoyed - all previous books by Hollinghurst, I was very much looking forward to reading his latest offering, "The Line of Beauty." And on the language side of things, I was not disappointed: Hollinghurst remains a master of descriptions and metaphores - a brilliant observer of characters and scenery. His prose is rich and fun to read.
Alas, just like his previous book, "The Spell", the story didn't quite click with me. The whole plot circles around an Oxford-alumni, Nick Guest, and his living with an MP's family in the mid-eighties. Whilst at Oxford, Nick fell in love with the MP's straight son, Toby, and now tries to stay close to him. It all sounds a bit like the typical "gay man falls in love with straight guy"-story, however, the book takes a dozen of twists and turns from there and goes - well, nowhere really. Like most Hollinghurst books, there is a kind of cleansing climax on the final few pages, but before he gets there, the reader is dragged through a - it appeared to me - rather aimless succession of "plot points"... several MP's, the PM (yes, Margaret T. herself makes an appearance), French holiday homes, loads of dukes and earls, a snobbish grandmother, a clinically depressed sister, a few lovers (one black and poor, the other one white and rich)... you get the picture.
If it weren't for Hollinghurst's fantastic language, I would have dropped the book on page 30. However, somehow I managed to get through to the final page (501). This book left me wondering what it was all about.
Alas, just like his previous book, "The Spell", the story didn't quite click with me. The whole plot circles around an Oxford-alumni, Nick Guest, and his living with an MP's family in the mid-eighties. Whilst at Oxford, Nick fell in love with the MP's straight son, Toby, and now tries to stay close to him. It all sounds a bit like the typical "gay man falls in love with straight guy"-story, however, the book takes a dozen of twists and turns from there and goes - well, nowhere really. Like most Hollinghurst books, there is a kind of cleansing climax on the final few pages, but before he gets there, the reader is dragged through a - it appeared to me - rather aimless succession of "plot points"... several MP's, the PM (yes, Margaret T. herself makes an appearance), French holiday homes, loads of dukes and earls, a snobbish grandmother, a clinically depressed sister, a few lovers (one black and poor, the other one white and rich)... you get the picture.
If it weren't for Hollinghurst's fantastic language, I would have dropped the book on page 30. However, somehow I managed to get through to the final page (501). This book left me wondering what it was all about.
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Ziemlich durchwachsen
Im Mittelpunkt steht Nick Guest, zu Beginn des Buches (1983) 21 Jahre alt und gerade als Untermieter bei seinem Collegefreund Toby in einer noblen Londoner Gegend eingezogen. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 14. November 2007 von Valentine
Macht verdirbt den Charakter!
"In the Line of Beauty", Gewinner des Booker Prize 2004, wirft einen kritisch-amüsanten Blick auf das Leben der Oberklasse im Großbritannien von Maggie Thatcher. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 3. März 2006 von Michael Dienstbier
The Line of Beauty
This book is utterly amazing because it combines an elaborate language and narrative style, usually associated with 19th century literature, with a topic which is highly... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 7. Dezember 2004 veröffentlicht
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