BOOK REVIEW

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Booker Prize

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  Nick Guest, a 21 year-old literature scholar, has come to stay with the wealthy and influential Feddens, parents of his Oxford chum Toby.  Life is good for the Feddens because it is 1983 in England, and dad Gerald (a conservative Member of Parliament) is an integral part of the new Margaret Thatcher regime.

Nick, even while becoming a fixture in the household, finds Gerald superficial. He reserves his admiration for Gerald's wife, the sophisticated and cooly intelligent Rachel.  He befriends Catherine the daughter who suffers biopolar disorder, and is consumed with disapproval at the family's politics.  But his heart is given hopelessly to Toby who is very straight and who would prefer to love Nick like a best friend.

Nick, who is very status-conscious, consoles himself by soaking up the high-class environment of the Feddens' posh Notting Hill home; he can even pretend that he belongs there! How he relishes carrying around the exclusive key to the gardens. 

Also, hoping to lose his virginity, he looks for a boyfriend through the personal ads. This leads him to Leo, a 30 year-old black man who travels by bicycle every day to his clerical job from the shabby apartment he shares with his religious West-Indies mother and sister.  Nick is in ecstasy over finding love and sex for the first time.  He tries to remember to look after Catherine who teeters on the edge of yet another breakdown.

The plot unfolds in glittering, complex sentences that are elaborate yet precise.  You feel you're with Nick, attending parties with lords and social-climbers, participating in the pretense and excesses of the time. The plot works on a deadpan satiric level, serving up poor Gerald for our amusement as well as the naive English public which seems to holds Margaret Thatcher in awe. Common folk refer to her in hushed tones as "the Lady" as if she's Queen Elizabeth and the Mother of God all rolled into one.

Just when Nick's romance with Leo is heating up, Part One ends.  Part Two (set in 1986) and Part Three (1987) follow a more jaded Nick who is still living with the Feddens when he is not snorting cocaine with his new boyfriend Wani Ouradi.  Wani, another Oxford chum, is the playboy son of a Lebanese mini-mart tycoon. 

Wani is tremendously creepy, perhaps even more so than the author intended.  Addicted to porn, drugs, and promiscuous sex, Wani pays no attention to Martine, his supposed fiancee.  Poor Martine becomes a "kept woman", maintained by Wani's own mother in a bizarre arrangement to have her on hand for the endlessly postponed wedding. Meanwhile Nick, when he's not dining at the Feddens table, is Wani's "kept man." 

There is also a funny interlude when Nick and Gerald visit Barwick, Nick's bucolic hometown and interact with Nick's well-meaning but unsophisticated parents, an antiques dealer and a housewife, of whom he is ashamed.  Gerald happens to be the MP representing that area, so he has to do the meet-and-greet with the common folk at the Barwick Summer Fete. This includes shaking a lot of hands, and pitching a wellington boot in a type of contest. 

Of course the reporters are always circling, looking for a scandal.  Nick knows this even while snorting cocaine in his room at the Feddens' and doing threesomes with Wani and strange men they pick up.  He comes to his senses only when he happens to spot some  risky behavior on the part of Gerald.

Nick is a good character even though he often behaves in a shallow way.  He's openly gay (a brave stance in 1983), and yet a regular, three-dimensional guy with no hint of stereotyping.  In his innocent days at the book's beginning, he categorizes himself as someone mad about sex even though he's never had any!  Later he grows older and wiser as he witnesses the effects of scandal and the deeper horror of AIDS.  His story is a good coming-of-age tale.  The Line of Beauty gets three stars out of five.

You can find it on Amazon through this link:

Line of Beauty

:

Noteworthy Links:   Wonderquest - Science Q/A! The Connection - Tech blog! Author site - John the Eunuch Historical Mystery series, Cozy Mystery List for all your cozy mystery needs, Obsidian Bookshelf - reviews of gay-themed fiction.
Impatient Reader is not responsible for content found through offsite links.