The Line of Beauty
Registered by Stoepbrak of Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa on 12/30/2016
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Synopsis (credit: back cover)
It is the summer of 1983, and young Nick Guest has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious new Tory MP, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their children.
As the boom-years of the mid-80s unfold, Nick, an innocent in matters of politics and money, becomes caught up in the Feddens’ world, with its grand parties, its holidays in the Dordogne, its parade of monsters both comic and threatening. An affair with a young black clerk gives him his first experience of romance; but it is a later affair, with a beautiful millionaire, that will change his life more drastically and bring into question the larger fantasies of a ruthless decade.
Winner: Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2004.
Shortlist: Costa Novel 2004.
Shortlist: National Book Critics Circle Awards: Fiction 2004.
On the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die List.
(Bought second-hand at Help the Rural Child Charity Bookshop, Main Road, Retreat.)
A reviewer of this book ended off with the following: "I must say that politics aside, the story is Brideshead Revisited 2.0. What was never shown in that particular work of British manners and bourgeois life is found nestled here. Thank god for the Modern Age!"
I presume I'm very much of the 1.0 generation, then. I loved
Brideshead Revisited but had to persevere with The Line of Beauty. Something of the senseless chase for political power/sex/money — in various degrees for the various characters — was just sad and exhausting. I did get it that it's brilliant satire and sharp observation of a period and lifestyle that flourished in the 1980s of Thatcher and the early days of HIV Aids.
The end of the book pulled it through for me, somehow, causing me to rate it a rather surprising 8, given my mood while reading it.
Journal Entry 3 by Stoepbrak at Help the Rural Child Chty Shp, Vct Rd in Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa on Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Released 1 yr ago (1/10/2023 UTC) at Help the Rural Child Chty Shp, Vct Rd in Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Donated to Help the Rural Child, a charity second-hand bookshop.
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