- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (5 Aug 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099468360
- ISBN-13: 978-0099468363
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 10.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 733,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Swimming Pool Library
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More About the Author
Product Description
Daily Telegraph
'Deserves first prize in every category-superbly written, wildly funny'
Product Description
This novel centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Twenty years on this is still superb!,
By Phil Shanklin (Isle of Wight UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Swimming Pool Library (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.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle version riddled with typos,
By Fraser Dyer (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Swimming Pool Library (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.
53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly realised and frequently steamy novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Swimming Pool Library (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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