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The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst | Literature & Fiction
Registered by wingFellravenwing of Redditch, Worcestershire United Kingdom on Sunday, July 03, 2005
Average 7 star rating by BookCrossing Members 

status (set by marko167): permanent collection


3 journalers for this copy...

Journal Entry 1 by wingFellravenwing from Redditch, Worcestershire United Kingdom on Sunday, July 03, 2005

This book has not been rated.

This is my reading group's choice for August. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at these things) it was on a 3-for-2 offer so I bought 2 other books as well.

Bad move. I was heading up to the Unconvention and came away with almost more books than I could carry. Next year I'm taking a trolley-case like everyone else. 

Journal Entry 2 by wingFellravenwing from Redditch, Worcestershire United Kingdom on Monday, August 08, 2005

7 out of 10

This is one of those novels about which I have very mixed feelings. Indeed, had it not been my reading group's chosen book for August, thus making me feel obliged to plod on with it if only to be able to explain on the night why I hadn't enjoyed it, I might well have abandoned it about half way through as a bad job.

That first half is dominated by the gay sex life, real and imaginary, of Nick, the central character of the novel. Although Nick's gay affairs are mentioned on the back cover of the novel, the blurb does not prepare the reader for just how much of that first half is dominated by them, nor does it prepare one for the graphic and nothing-left-to-the-imagination descriptions of buggery, buttocks and general seediness involved in his various encounters. Apart from anything else Nick as a character comes across more like a hormonal 14-year-old rather than as the post-Oxford 21- to 23- year-old that he is supposed to be. Personally I find it very difficult indeed to like or empathise with a character, gay or straight, who seems to be utterly obsessed with where the next shag is coming from, and for all the above reasons I hit a point about half way through at which I very nearly threw in the towel and picked up another novel instead.

But wait! Eventually it does get better, or at least the focus moves into territory which I find much more interesting - to whit, the greed and political and business corruption which characterised the mid to late 1980s and very early 1990s.

It seems like ancient history now to reel off the names of long-forgotten corporate scandals - the collapses of listed company Polly Peck, a company manufacturing packaging products and materials whose Turkish-born chief executive, Asil Nadir, is still hiding out in northern Cyprus, a fugitive from British justice; of Coloroll Group (home decorating products); of Ferranti International plc (high technology and defence systems) and of commercial and merchant bank BCCI; the Blue Arrow and Guinness share trading and price fixing scandals; and of course the collapse of Maxwell Communications group, including Mirror Group newspapers, under Robert Maxwell. The cumulative effect of all of these, and other, scandals was the corporate governance revolution in the UK which began with the appointment of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance chaired by Sir Adrian Cadbury and hence known as the Cadbury Committee. As a Chartered Secretary, I live professionally with the effects and ramifications of this series of collapses and failures.

All of this may seem irrelevant were it not for the second half of the novel, dwelling in some detail as it does, on the business relationship between MP and businessman Gerald Fedden and the chillingly cold, inhuman and psychopathic Sir Maurice Tipper. We get a clear look at Sir Maurice, a brutal asset-stripper knighted some years previously for his donations to the (presumably) Conservative Party, and his Stepford Wife Lady Sally Tipper when they join Nick and the Feddens at the latter's French manoir for part of the summer holiday and bring the holiday perilously close to disaster by their attitude and behaviour. One feels at that point that getting close to Sir Maurice could be a very dangerous mistake to make - and crossing him a more dangerous one still.

The novel opens with Nick's moving into the Feddens' posh Notting Hill house as a lodger and friend of the son of the family, and shortly afterwards embarking on an affair with his first real boyfriend. It ends with him moving out, under a cloud and largely a scapegoat for the failures of others, amid the actual and pending deaths of his gay friends and lovers and a slew of political and personal scandals involving those around him.

It was a long novel, perhaps too long, but if the reader makes it to half way it's worth persevering with it. I'm not convinced it should have won the Booker, though. 

Journal Entry 3 by wingFellravenwing from Redditch, Worcestershire United Kingdom on Wednesday, August 17, 2005

This book has not been rated.

It is worth, I think, recording the views and reactions of my fellow reading group members to this book.

With the exception of one member, who absolutely *adored* the character of Nick, the general reaction was that Hollinghurst had stuffed his novel with a universe of utterly shallow, greedy and materialistic characters who, it was nevertheless agreed, were real and believable in the context of what happened to some parts of British society in the 1980s. The question then arose of whether Nick's appreciation was based on commercial knowledge (his father was a Northamptonshire antiques dealer) or genuinely on an aesthetic appreciation in that he was, as a child and teenager, continually surrounded by beauty which was bought and sold and therefore had a price.

The one dissenter argued that Nick was the one character in the book who genuinely had an appreciation of the aesthetic value and quality of the beautiful objects he found around him in the houses of the rich, whereas everyone else had a "knows the price of everything but the value of nothing" reaction to them.

I commented that for me, Hollinghurst seemed to have been trying, in part at least, to have written "Brideshead Revisited" several generations on and a couple of steps down on the social ladder. While this had struck none of the other group members they generally agreed when I had outlined my reasons for saying so. 

Journal Entry 4 by wingFellravenwing from Redditch, Worcestershire United Kingdom on Monday, August 22, 2005

This book has not been rated.

Sent to goatgrrl as it's on her wish-list. Posted by surface mail but if it's anything like previous books I've sent her it should arrive by the weekend.

Happy reading! 

Journal Entry 5 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Saturday, August 27, 2005

This book has not been rated.

You were right, Fellraven, and I can't believe our luck with international mail! The Line of Beauty was waiting for me when I got home from work last night -- just four days after you mailed it by surface. Unbelievable. (I'm afraid it would take 4 - 6 weeks in the opposite direction ...)

Thanks so much for sending this along -- I've been wanting to read it for nearly a year, and I look forward to responding to some of the notes in your journal entries once I've had an opportunity to do so.

Very best wishes from British Columbia! 

Journal Entry 6 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Tuesday, August 30, 2005

This book has not been rated.

Having heard almost nothing but criticism of this novel since it won the Booker Prize nearly a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself captivated by it. The Line of Beauty tells the story of Nick Guest, just down from Oxford and twenty-one years old as the book begins in 1983, and living as a lodger in the home of wealthy Conservative Member of Parliament Gerald Fedden and his family. The book follows the lives of Nick, the Fedden family, and the cast of super-privileged Tory friends, politicians and business men with whom they associate, over the course of four eventful years -- until the whole edifice of lies, pretences and flawed relationships seems to crumble around them in the fall of 1987.

There may be a handful of sympathetic, likable characters in this novel, but they have walk-on parts and don't tend to survive long. (Parenthetically: I'm puzzled by the number of reviewers whose critical assessments of this novel seem to be rooted in their dislike of the characters. It's never occurred to me to connect "good book" with "likeable characters", especially if "likeable" implies some endorsement of a character's behaviour, politics or moral standards. Some of the best novels I've ever read were constructed around characters who were seriously flawed -- if not downright loathsome!) So while I can't say I liked the character of Nick (and I'm decidedly curious about what it was about him anyone could find to "adore"), I could certainly empathize with him, and in fact found plenty in him that reminded me of myself at his age (it happens that Nick and I would have been contemporaries). For me, the most interesting facet of Nick's character was his disconnectedness from his own parents, and his overwhelming desire to insinuate himself into the Feddens family life. I didn't interpret this as social climbing -- at least not only that -- so much as a kind of forlorn rootlessness that had him trying desperately to make substitute parents of Gerald and Rachel (remember his first reaction to his discovery of Gerald and Penny's relationship: the kind of childish despair one might expect of someone discovering his or her own parent's illicit affair). I thought this was a poignant and somewhat underdeveloped aspect of the story.

The prevalence of gay sex scenes in the first third of the novel helped me anticipate the looming AIDS epidemic, which was still quite remote in 1983. Faithful to the reality of the times, Hollinghurst makes no direct mention of the disease until about three hundred pages into the novel, though there are references to some minor gay characters getting unaccountably thinner, and to Leo's friend Pete's unnamed illness. Since condoms are conspicuously absent from the sexual paraphernalia which accompanies Nick and Leo to the park, we feel we know what's coming, and indeed it does, just as it did in real life: with the first knowledge of an infected distant acquaintance, followed by the realization that the disease had touched a closer friend or colleague, then finally -- for some -- someone much closer to home. Hollinghurst obviously lived through that period in the 1980s, as did anyone now over the age of 35 who was -- for whatever reason -- connected to the gay community. I remember it well, and The Line of Beauty evoked the atmosphere of shame and isolation that surrounded that first wave of infection very effectively.

As I said in a recent email to Fellraven, I don't miss the 1980s a bit, but their ultimate impact on my life (and - I think - on the society around me) was positive in this way: they taught us that greed, decadence and guilty secrets aren't a sustainable way of life. I think we're better people -- and better societies -- for having survived that era.

Thanks so much, Fellraven, for generously sharing this book. I'm still hunting around for its next destination ...

(Photo: Alan Hollinghurst winning the Booker in October 2004.) 

Journal Entry 7 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Thursday, September 01, 2005

This book has not been rated.

The Line of Beauty is off to Belgium! I'll be posting it this afternoon to marko167 in Brussels. Thanks once again, Fellraven, for making this book available to us.

(Photo: angel in Victory Square, Vancouver, January 2004.) 

Journal Entry 8 by wingmarko167wing from Sant Pere de Ribes, Barcelona Spain on Thursday, November 10, 2005

This book has not been rated.

I received this book a while ago and have just realised that I hadn't posted that I received it. Aarghh!!!! Sorry fellraven and goatgrrl, can you forgive me. 

Journal Entry 9 by wingmarko167wing from Sant Pere de Ribes, Barcelona Spain on Friday, January 06, 2006

7 out of 10

I enjoyed this book even if IMO it was a little long. It does in part capture the essence of the totally materialistic eighties and the scandals that erupted from the greed it bred.
I really didn't think the sex scenes were that explicit, especially when compared to a lot of hetero scenes in more popular novels. There was a lot of sex mentioned both real but also fantasy, but that is par for the course for any teenage early twenties male.

I am a Booker prize winner collector so will keep a hold on to this copy until I get a first edition to replace it. 

Journal Entry 10 by wingmarko167wing at X - FM Radio in Basel, Basel-Stadt Switzerland on Tuesday, February 20, 2007

This book has not been rated.

Released 4 yrs ago (2/20/2007 UTC) at X - FM Radio in Basel, Basel-Stadt Switzerland

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Being interviewed by the radio station about Bookcrossing so thought I'd release a few good books at the station. 



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