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.