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Product Description
Review
"'Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny' Daily Telegraph 'The first major novel in Britain to put gay life in its modern place and context... A historic novel and historic debut' - Guardian 'The tautness and energy of Alan Hollinghurst's novel derive from its ambiguous status a it shimmers somewhere between pastoral romance and sulphurous confession, between an affectionate and credible rendering of contemporary mores and lurid melodrama...classic English prose...surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author' - Edmund White, Sunday Times 'Beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions. It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction's solid grace' - New York Times Book Review"
Book Description
'Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny' Daily Telegraph
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
Enjoyable novel, much in the vein of Hollinghurt's other work. But honestly, couldn't the publisher bother to proof-read the electronic version...? Appears as if they have scanned a hard copy and it just hasn't decoded the text properly. 1 instead of I; d instead of cl; closed gaps between words; others word just complete garbage. Given there is in error on every page or two it really gets in the way of enjoying the book. As the Kindle edition sells for the same price as the paperback it does feel like we're being taken for a ride.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book twenty years ago when it first came out. Although I remember loving it, I've always had it linked in my head with a strange experience I had with finding some letters belonging to an elderly vicar in a library copy (it's a long story, and given the themes of the book oddly appropriate and the vicar proved to be quite hard to shake off!)so although I've read and really enjoyed other Hollinghurst books (didn't go a great deal on "The Spell")I've never gone back to this one. Until now. I thought the twenty years might have dulled its appeal, but it is an outstanding novel. It probably was one of the first UK books to have gay life as a central theme within a literary framework and it still has the power to draw the reader in, to shock, to surprise and to entertain. And it is so well written. I thought because I'm now twenty years older the slightly old-fashioned class and race aspects might leave me cold, but they didn't. It's an incredibly intense and rich novel, which repays re-reading (even if you leave it 20 years like I did). It is remarkably honest and sexy. I'm going to re-read the other Hollinghurst novels - because here I think we may have one of our greatest living authors- I might even give "The Spell" another try.
53 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The world of this book is a rather specific one - that of the male gay Englishman in the 20th century, so if you aren't male, or gay, or English, you might want to pop your head out of the book and gasp for air every so often. Also the graphic descriptions of homosexual congress can make it an uncomfortable read on crowded commuter trains, as I discovered to my cost. Having said that, the book is well, if lavishly, written, and the interlocking tales of danger and desire work together to produce a brilliantly cohesive picture of the evolution of English gay life before the onset of AIDS. The story centres on the relationship between the narrator, a privileged and promiscuous young aristocrat, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, whose life he saves in a public toilet. Nantwich turns out to have had quite an eventful life, as we discover when the narrator is asked to write his biography. The depictions of white boys attracted to black boys are particularly well-handled, and the twists and turns of the plot never take you where you expect. The book's world may be insular, but its immersion in and explication of that world is brilliantly realised.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
vivid but bizarre
This book divided members of our book group on age lines. The older people saw it as an accurate reflection on the hedonistic pre-AIDS days. Read more
Published 7 days ago by Mr. D. P. Jay
Writing of the first rank
This is a very fine novel, beautifully written and quintessentially English, drenched in the atmosphere of London; it's amusing, provocative, shocking, and yes, sad - sad in the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Dr Faustus
Too much sex and a half baked story.
I was given a signed copy of The Line of Beauty and was told that I needed to read The Swimming Pool Library first. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Winstone
Brilliant Author but does it need the volume of graphic sex?
The Swimming Pool library is set in 1983 pre AIDS London and focusses on a highly sexed gay young rich (not particularly likeable) man who doesn't have much to do other than... Read more
Published 5 months ago by janien
Exceptional
The year is 1983, Will Beckwith is twenty-five years old, a gay aristocrat public school and Oxford educated, and living a life of leisure and pleasure, not needing to work thanks... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Benjamin
Brilliant
This is the best book I have read for a very long time. Although the characters are not ones you might meet every day, every one of them is totally alive and convincing. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Reviewer Pete
Potentially great book marred by endless sex
There is no denying that Alan Hollinghurst is a great writer, and this is a potentially fascinating book with engaging characters and a clever and interest main plot thread. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Jake
the swimmingpool library
The book I received was not of the quality I was expecting. However, I an pleased that my money has been refunded quickly and am pleased with the promote customer service.
Published 9 months ago by shelagh
A decent story compromised
There is a decent story in this book but unfortunately the author's constant reversion to gratuitous and extraneous descriptions of sex rather detract from it. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Paul Christian
Out of my league
Very well written but I will need to read this book again when I have a thesaurus to hand. Somebody with a better intellect than I would probably love it. Read more
Published 18 months ago by David O'Donovan
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