Amazon.co.uk Review
The Spell has found Alan Hollinghurst on the
Guardian's Fiction Prize shortlist, and with good reason. His first two novels were mischievous, escapist things, toying with the delights of colonial buggery (
The Swimming Pool Library) and underage Belgian boys (
The Folding Star). In
The Spell he's come of age, finally engaging with the issues of relationships, monogamy and aging that preoccupy the work of his peers.
Alex is an uptight 36-year-old Foreign Office man who suddenly falls for Danny, the 22- year-old son of his ex-lover's new lover (are you following this?) The infatuation with Danny is as much an infatuation with the ecstasy-fuelled nightlife to which Danny introduces him, and it's hardly a surprise when the relationship fizzles. But Alex is forced into confronting his desires and the novel ends leaving him unsure but at least taking stock and looking forward. The story veers wildly between an intoxicating London and a windswept, traditional Wessex, as if Hollinghurst can't yet reconcile true rural Englishness with the possibilities afforded by cosmopolitan queer London. But there's an honesty here that's welcome after the (admittedly arousing) archness of his earlier work, and a real sense of facing up to life's bigger questions. --Alan Stewart, Amazon
Review
'The Spell contains the most delicately sensuous portrait-painting...brilliant imagery...and hilarious cross-purpose jokes... Sentence by sentence the novel weaves its magic' - Independent. 'Alex is 36, something in the Foreign Office, discreetly gay...his ex-lover Justin invites him to a weekend in the Dorset village of Litton Gambril with his new boyfriend, forty-something architect Robin, and Robin's twenty-two-year-old gay son, Danny. Then Alex drops a tab of ecstasy, provided by young Danny, and embarks on a bewildering voyage of self-discovery in a drug-fuelled London club scene... A masterpiece of sustained literary titillation' - The Times. 'Love, lust and loss among a group of middle-class gay Englishmen... Young and old, the town and the country, the wild and respectable: Holinghurst explores each of these uneasy conflicts with wit, generosity and sharply observed comedy' - Mail on Sunday. 'Comic fantasy is grounded in a wealth of sharp observation and psychological insight. Hollinghurst has lost none of his authority' - Evening Standard
by Alan Hollinghurst
by Alan Hollinghurst
by Alan Hollinghurst
by Ann Patchett
by Jamie O'Neill
