Strangely dissatisfied with Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty - comments?

[AGCG]

Can anyone else who's read this help me out? I had heard such good things, and it won the Booker (not something I usually take on board though, given how much they love, but I don't, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan!). There were parts of it that I loved; it was so evocative, and parts of it so beautiful, moving and tragic, and I also got such a sense of the time it was set, the politics, and AIDS. But I finished it feeling a bit dissatisfied, I think with Nick as the main character - he seemed, even at the end, to be distant, when most of the people around him, even those who had appeared relatively briefly, felt more fully rounded. Was this deliberate? With so many Henry James references, I can't help but feel that maybe this was deliberate, that cool distance HJ often has with his characters. I keep thinking also about the way it showed how homosexuality was still something very much to hide, to the extent that Nick didn't seem to realise that he was hiding it, even while he wanted to tell people what he was doing. But then, I couldn't bring myself to believe that he stuck with Wani for so long just because he was beautiful, even though he was so cruel, it just didn't feel true.

So, that's a bit of a jumble - I would love to hear what other people thought about it? Thanks!

I read it when it first came out and really didn't like it. Unfortunately, I can now remember nothing at all about it.

I read this after having watched the TV series and enjoyed both, although found the excessive casual sex and drug taking rather sordid. I thought it strange that the family accepted them into their home for years (why?) less surprising that they rejected him in the end.

I didn't get the feeling of Nick being distant at the end - but when I watched the tv series I felt it was an upbeat ending, with Nick having a good future to look forward to, whereas when I read the book I felt maybe I'd interpreted that wrongly and it seemed to point to the fact that he would become ill/die of AIDS .

He's called "Nick Guest", which is a clue that, yes, he's going to be utilised by the author in a self-conscious way. He's a bit like the narrator in "The Great Gatsby" - a bit unreliable, a bit on the edge, a witness, a guest at a loooong party, a guest in other people's lives/houses/the story. I love the ending where they say: "And who are you and what are you doing here anyway?"

Alan Hollinghurst does this with his characters: they hover between being very "real" (embedded in socio-history) and very "literary" and cipher-like. I think it's the "Swimming Pool Library" (maybe??) where there's a waiter, who literally waits ... Ho ho.

Author also seems to like exploring allure of cruelty in other books. Though I suspect that the Nick/Wani relationship is probably deconstructed by Eng Lit and Cult Studs students in all manner of ways.

Wani reminded me of a couple of people I used to know, so didn't seem particularly incredible. That said, AH is surely inviting reflection about socio-historical determination in relationships throughout the novel.

I must admit, I loved this novel and thought it was truly brilliant.

Oh and yes, I think that visible/invisible thing is deliberate around (homo-) sexuality. There's so much you could say about that: AH does rather like his U/C settings (though that can be a genre/fantasy thing within "pulp" gay fiction) so is the invisibility/closetting thing a result of the author's peredilection or did he choose that setting in order to explore that dynamic? Or both? After all, one of the things about the gay history movement is that there was increased visibility in this period. There again, there was the craziness of the Conservative social conservatism, Section 28 and so on. Which, ironically, led to a very engaged political presence around these issues and AIDS.

And the "closetting" - which is of a very interesting type in itself - is hilariously at variance with the "outness" of the sexual content of the text.

It's a brilliant exploration of the peculiarities of a particular social group and historical period, as well as working brilliantly with other themes of the novel.

Then, of course, there are other the contrasts between different forms of "closetting", beings silenced and things not being seen: for example, the relationships in the Black family - particularly when the two female lovers visit Nick and the shock he experiences when he realises they are together.

I was going to say exactly the same as animula about the Great Gatsby reference - Nick Carraway is a similar sort of narrator.

Like animula, I loved The Line of Beauty. I think it's very subtle and elegaic and witty, and packs a real punch at the end.

Also enjoyed his more recent one, The Stranger's Child.