Alan HollinghurstRecensioni

Een vroege Hollinghurst (zijn tweede). Dit was de eerste die ik in het Nederlands las, en niet las maar hoorde, en die daardoo erg lang duurde: deze factoren maakten dat ik dit boek niet helemaal naar waarde kan schatten, en dat zeker m de structuur niet helemaal tot me is doorgedrongen. Edward Mannings 33 jaar oud vertrekt in het begin van de jaren '90 uit het VK naar Brugge om Engelse les te geven aan twee jongens van 17. Op een ervan, Luc, (omgekeerd cul) is hij al bij voorbaat smoorverliefd. Al vanaf dag één stort Edward zich in het homoleven. Hij hoereertoveral in het rond: kroeg, park, zwembad. Begint een enigszins serieuze relatie met een allochtone havenarbeider, en een uitgesproken los-vaste verhouding met Matt die schaamteloos is, zijn geld verdient met virtueel koppelen en de verkoop van gedragen mannenondergoed. Bij alle seks, die ook nog gepaard gaat met heel wat drank, blijft zijn obsessie voor Luc het centrum van zijn bestaan. De jongen, die van school gestuurd is vanwege een duistere nacht die hij met een aantal arbeiders op een schip heeft doorgebracht, geeft niet zo sjoege. Maar Edward komt hem en zijn hartsvrienden Patrick en Sibille wel geregeld tegen. Eenmaal rijdt met hem zelfs naar een badplaats aan de Noord-Franse kust waar de 3 een weekend , mag zij een doorbrengen om ze vanuit het buurhuis te bespieden en zich op Luc af te trekken. De andere jongen, Marcel, is niet zo aantrekkelijk, saai en trager, maar hij brengt Edward wel in contact met Paul die de directeur is het Edgard Orst-museum, een Belgische schilder die wel wat lijkt op Ensor en Khnopf. Het wordt verricht ook werk voor Paul en helpt hem de catalogus af te maken die totaal vastgelopen was. Gesprekken en bespiegelingen over kunst, maar ook herinneringen van Paul over de Duitse bezetting, zijn homoseksuele jeugdervaringen (nu is hij “gewoon“ getrouwd) en wat hij voelt als zijn verraad van Orst. In een tweede deel gaat Edward terug naar de plaats waar hij vandaan komt, om zijn eerste liefde te begraven die bij een tragisch (maar bijna komisch) auto-ongeluk omgekomen. Hij deed met zijn vriend in antiek. Terugblik op Edwards jeugd en zijn seksuele ontwaken. In het derde deel komen de gebeurtenissen in een stroomversnelling, Luc, Patrick en Sibille komen drinken in de homokroeg, er is een wrijving, na eindeloos prickteasen gebeurt het tussen Luc en Edward. Daarna verdwijnt de jongen spoorloos. Individuele zoektochten en verwijten van de protagonisten tegen elkaar, schijnbaar tegenstrijdige bekentenissen en onthullingen. Een open einde.
Het bovenstaande laat niet zien wat ik zo goed aan het boek vond: ofschoon de vertaling mij de eerste paar 100 bladzijden geregeld de plank net mis leek te slaan, vond ik de rest wel een rehabilitatie. De beschrijvingen van seksuele spanning en seksuele situaties vond ik zeer realistisch, herkenbaar en meeslepend (veel Engelse lezers klagen dat de homoboeken altijd seks moeten hebben zonder zich te realiseren dat heteroboeken altijd seks moeten hebben). Maar ook de weemoedige terugblik op Edwards jeugd met een vader die professioneel zong, een dorp waar de wereld nog onbedorven leek en zijn al jong ontluikende gevoelsleven zijn meesterlijk. De obsessie voor Luc en de onophoudelijke zoektocht naar sekscontacten zijn twee kanten van dezelfde medaille: het mateloze verlangen naar de ene geliefde dat nooit vervuld kan worden. Concessies zoals een vaste verhouding met zijn havenarbeider of zoals zijn jeugdliefde Dawn deed met vriend in een burgermansbestaan doet Edward niet. De rol van het thema van de schilder die blind wordt en uiteindelijk alleen nog witte doeken schildert kon ik niet helemaal peilen, maar zeker is dat ook daar de verdwenen geliefde van de schilder die de zee in zwom en nooit terugkeerde essentieel is. Natuurlijk zit het boek ook vol subtiele kruisverwijzingen en verbanden zoals je van Hollinghurst verwacht.

I guess I prefer more conventionally plotted novels. The publisher's blurb on the copy I bought was, I feel, misleading in that it implied far more narrative unity than the novel actually delivers, and whoever wrote that copy did Hollinghurst no favors because it leads the reader into the story with expectations doomed to remain unfulfilled. It should be promoted as a collection of loosely related stories. With "The Stranger's Child," I assumed Hollinghurst was using a form that he felt his story required, but now he has repeated the structure in his follow-up, it seems more like a form he prefers, rather than a form that his material demands. At first it's kind of fun, starting each new section and trying to figure out how the new characters relate to the previous (or if they are the same people), but after a while that begins to feel a little coy.

In part three, the repeated descriptions of Johnny’s har were a little. odd.½

I can see why some readers find the middle section long and somewhat boring. Part II is probably the best section of the novel--reminds me of Elizabeth Bowen and Anthony Powell at their best. Powell is probably the better comparison, with his multi-generational structuring, and in so comparing you can see why readers get frustrated: the book feels as though it should be much longer. The game of trying to guess which characters are the same characters from the preceding part, and how the new characters connect with the older characters, gets a little tiresome. Still, I thought it was an excellent novel. Not, by a long shot, nearly as good as "The Line of Beauty," but I'm certainly glad I read it.

I don't know how to rate this. Until about fifty pages from the end, I sort of had a cohesive idea of it; it frustrated me somewhat and occasionally bored me, but I felt like I could talk about it: the writing, the sort of intergenerational fetishization of black men, the way that I kind of wish any other character in this were the protagonist...
Now I'm much more aggravated but also much more interested in it. It's beautiful and totally unresolved in the kind of way that reminds me somewhat of My Fair Lady.

Although the story is different, the structure of this book reminded me a lot of the last Hollinghurst I read, The Stranger's Child. At the core there's the lived experience of one person, but that person remains in the shadows while others live their lives in the centre, and keep coming against the unknowable core but getting their own impressions and reflections of it. There's also the frequently awkward relationship Johathan has with his father David, and how people of certain age seem to be interested in him only because of it.

A strange, melancholy book redeemed by some of the most nuanced descriptions of commonplace feelings I've ever read.

In the first part of this book, in the 1910s before the first world war, Cecil, a poet, arrives to visit his friend George and his family—his mother, brother Hubert, and sister Daphne. Out of the visit comes a poem that later becomes famous, initially written in Daphne's autograph book but probably written George in mind. What follows in the later parts is the afterlife of Cecil, who died in the war, with a fancy memorial at the family estate and collected poems edited and published by a friend. Generation after generation, new people find themselves interested in him and try to understand what he was actually like, but ways to getting to that are increasingly difficult. People only know their own stories, didn't want to know, didn't have the words, made their memories into stories they were comfortable sharing, put their papers and photos away and forgot about them. At the end, there are only maybes and theories and speculation, a tantalising gap that just cannot be filled. For me, this aspect was the most compelling thing about the book, the characters much less so.

I enjoyed this a lot, the kind of layered structure I enjoy. This novel shifts in time and protagonist, from the turn of the 20th century to its end. The unifying story is that of a poet, Cecil Valance, and we see him through the people who become infatuated with him and his works. Cecil is young, handsome, talented, and aristocratic. A poem he writes in a young girl's autograph album becomes an emblem of English pride, one that every schoolchild reads. In each era, gay men are the main characters (though there’s a hint a some lesbians) and we see how the furtive relationships of the 1900s move to married characters in the 80s. There's also a strong woman, the girl with the autograph album, whose life touches everyone in the story in one way or another.

This novel begins in 1983 when middle-class Nick Guest has just graduated from Oxford. He comes down to London and is given a room in the prosperous home of one of his classmates. The father, Gerald Fedden, is a conservative MP, and the mother, Rachel, comes from a wealthy banking family. Nick makes himself useful to the family in one way or another over the next several years. He becomes an inside observer of the workings of the upper classes, the wealthy and the politically connected during the Thatcher years. As an observer, Nick basically remains an outsider (though he doesn't always recognize this himself), and never really becomes a full participant in the goings-on. And since Nick is gay, the book is also the story of gay life in London during the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first part takes place in 1983 when Nick has just come down to London and has his first love affair with Leo, a young but more experienced civil servant. The second part takes place in 1986 when Nick is both working for and having an affair with Wani, a former Oxford classmate. In the last part, in 1987, AIDS is ravaging Nick's social group, and disasters of other sorts are befalling one after another of the other characters.

Hollinghurst writes beautifully, and I was always fully engaged in this book. The book is full of insightful and perceptive observations about the time, the place, culture, and the society in which these characters move. (One reviewer compared the book and its social observations to Proust). The book serves both as a very personal story of one man and his friends, and as a political and societal history of the Thatcher years. I highly recommend it.

4 1/2 stars½

I was seriously disappointed in this novel after the brilliance of The Line of Beauty and The Swimming Pool Library by the same author. However, Hollinghurst has produced some sub-par books before, namely The Spell and The Folding Star, both of which left me cold. So, if you've heard great things about this author and been let down, maybe try one of the prize winning titles.

This book is predicated on the odd idea held by British authors that just about everyone who died in World War I was gorgeous and gay. Cecil Valance is an aristocrat poet who goes off to war after having an affair with his university friend, George. We follow the fortunes of both George's family and Cecil's from Cecil's first visit to Two Acres - the decidedly middle class patch of Sussex (or something) where George lives with his family - right up to the present day.

The parts of the book set closer to the present day work much better than the historical sections. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a very good 300 page book somewhere in the 600 pages that I was forced to read. Hollinghurst's prose is as good as ever in parts, but again seems to lose its force on occasions. I can't presume to guess what the creative process is like for someone like Hollinghurst, but I suspect that he had started to lose interest in this story when it came to the editing phase.

And as a final complaint, the novel spends far too much time with gay characters who are in the closet. I understand that this was the reality of the time, but in 2011 I want to read stories about openly gay men (if I'm going to read about gay men) living their lives, not closeted men who are half living.

Having said all that, I eagerly anticipate Hollinghurst's next book, as when he's good, he's very very good.

My least favourite Alan Hollinghurst book. It's about a bunch of highly punchable characters moving back and forth between the country and the city and falling in love, etc. The lack of architecture to describe impacts negatively on Hollinhurst's writing, as does the lack of plot. None of the characters seem to grow or develop, they just move around.

There is so much to like about Alan Hollinghurst novels. There’s the flawless prose, witty, crystal clear and wonderfully paced, with just enough detail to make each scene last just as long as it should. There’s the gay characters, who are fleshed out and complex and don’t spend a minute longer in the closet than they have to, which is such a breath of fresh air when so much gay literature is about the oppression of the closet or the torment of first emerging from it. There’s the sense of profundity given to ordinary moments, an ability to tell a bigger story just by describing a staircase or relating a conversation where what has not been said is more important than what has.

But what varies in Hollinghurst’s novels is the bigger stuff – plot and characterisation. In this I feel that The Sparsholt Affair falls a little bit short of his best stuff (The Line of Beauty and The Swimming Pool Library being the standouts in my recollection). Some of the characters weren’t that interesting and some of them were more interesting than I realised until near the end when they were retrospectively fleshed out. And the plot seems to meander in places – there are sections which don’t seem to tie in at all to the bigger themes of the book.

I suspect that Hollinghurst novels are a bit like Murakami novels and Austin Powers movies – you prefer the first one you encounter because they’re so stylistically distinct that the novel shock of pleasure can’t ever quite be recaptured. Having said that, the gorgeous prose and ability to tackle big emotions with refreshingly ordinary gay lives will keep me reading every book that he publishes.

I read this at the suggestion of Mark for a group read this month. It wasn't so much a group read, as a parallel read. I'm glad for the nudge. Set in Thatcher's England, and follows a young gay man living his life in two worlds, the LGBT community and the upper crust political world of the family he lives with. I naively, totally forgot that this was set in the 80s and should have realized that AIDS would play a picture in the story and when it reared its ugly head, I was caught off guard. An award winning book that is well worth the time. For the group, if you're keeping track, at just over 500 pages, I'm adding it to the 75 Chunksters list.

Some quotes...
The strange, the marvelous thing was that at no point did Gerald say what he considered Nick actually to have done. It seemed as natural as day to him to dress up the pet lamb as the scapegoat.

"These champagne flutes are simply enormous!" she said. "I know, they're sort of champagne tubas, aren't they," said Nick

She noticed nothing, and yet she remembered everything½

“The pursuit of love seemed to need the cultivation of indifference.”

It is 1983, London. The Thatcher years. Nick Guest is a twenty year old gay man living in an attic bedroom of the Feddens, a wealthy influential family. Gerald Fedden is a Member of Parliament. Nick and their son Toby were friends at Oxford. Nick comes from a more modest background, but is smart and cultured and fits in well with this top-tier family. As the narrative moves through the 80s, cracks begin to appear in and scandals are looming, threatening to break this family apart and Nick finds himself in the middle of it.
This was my introduction to Hollinghurst and this Booker Prize-winning ended up being the perfect place to start. The writing is excellent and so is the story-tellling. This does deal with gay culture in the 1980s, which of course includes the AIDs crisis. It makes the perfect companion piece to The Great Believers. Highly recommended.½

In the tradition of Anthony Powell, I think, and Evelyn Waugh. Part two is very funny, the ending melancholy. The best of his books I’ve yet read. The prose is nearly perfect, and the plot quite absorbing. His insights and figurative language are impressive throughout. One of those books that I was sorry to finish .

It seems the general consensus, based on reviews of Hollinghurst’s new novel, is that he’s recycled the structure of his prior novel, The Stranger’s Child, and that the vast majority of critics feel that this structure worked better in that novel than it does here. 



Having been a long-time fan of Hollinghurst, and having read his work in order, watching his prose develop and observing as his scope gets wider and wider, I beg to disagree. While I liked The Stranger’s Child, I felt that the shifting points-of-view and the fragments worked against that novel—largely because there was just too much plot. Here, though, in The Sparsholt Affair, plot is so secondary that the passing of time, the fragments, and the more figural narrative used to focus mostly on Johnny Sparsholt, the son of the infamous David Sparsholt of the titular affair, work in this novel’s favor. Because, in truth, the novel is not above the affair so much as it’s about its repercussions: familial, filial, across generations as society and culture change (specifically with regard to homosexuality), all spanning the literary and artistic worlds, peopled by figures whose work Hollinghurst describes in such detail—this novel, indeed, had some of the best writing about admiring paintings and about painting paintings that I’ve ever read—that you wish they were real so that you could read their books and view their works of art.


Although Hollinghurst said in interviews that the figural narrative he employed in The Line of Beauty, his best novel, was not one he would use again, he’s mostly done it here, and that’s what makes this novel work so well. Spanning the 1940s to the 2010s, The Sparsholt Affair owes as much to James for its astute comments on social class, understated and often unspoken sexual desire, and its use of ambiguity (especially in terms of conversations that are so insular it can often be hard to know to what’s being referred) as it does to Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. Just as Woolf hardly ever gives us Jacob on his own, preferring instead to give others’ portraits and memories of Jacob to give the reader an impression of him, so, too, does Hollinghurst not divulge the full content of the Sparsholt affair. While this may frustrate most readers—and, I would argue, this is where most readers’ discontent with this novel likely lies—this is not a novel about the affair itself, but about how cloaked and veiled such incidents have had to be throughout a century that first condemned homosexuality and then began, slowly, to become more accepting of it. Even Johnny Sparsholt, toward the end, in passages that are reminiscent of Hollinghurst’s The Spell, tries to immerse himself in the gay scene of the 2010s despite nearing the age of sixty: this is a novel about generation gaps and loneliness and mortality and feeling so isolated from one’s own sexuality due to social norms that the titular affair itself is but metonym that drives Hollinghurst’s examination of these themes forward.



I would highly recommend that those new to Hollinghurst do not start here. The Line of Beauty is perhaps the best starting point, despite most of his other novels paling in comparison to that gem of a book; The Swimming-Pool Library is another good starting point. Here, in The Sparsholt Affair, all of Hollinghurst’s previous novels and their concerns are present, which is perhaps why I appreciated it as much as I did: it’s both him looking back over the past century and him looking back over his past novels. To me, it reads like closure of a kind, and I know, without a doubt that we can continue to expect amazing things from Hollinghurst: the best living gay British author, hands down.

Beautifully written, but long. Not that I mind long books, but no matter how well Hollinghurst can write, a 563 page novel is too long. With a similar portrayal of class differences, this novel and its style can be compared to Brideshead Revisited although with less palatial grandeur and plot, and less subtlety in gay references. Hollinghurst's epic family saga could be regarded a social history of the 20th century, particularly deft in demonstrating how attitudes towards homosexuality changed. Although Cecil Valance, (said to parallel Rupert Brooke, which is not very complimentary to Brooke) a wealthy student friend and lover of George Sawle, died in the first World War, the undistinguished poetry from his short life influenced generations. In later years the memories generated take on an almost mythical quality, which might be said to be typical of most nostalgic memories.

Interesting that some of the Booker Prize judges of 2011 expressed a desire for books that "zip along". Unsurprising that Hollinghurst didn't progress from the long list.½

Out of collection

I might lower my rating later, but it seemed impossible to give only 3.5 considering the prose, the subtlety of the story telling, and the generosity extended to the the unlikely social class and that protagonist finds himself swept up by. At a certain point I realized that I was completely uninterested in the "plot" of the novel, and was a little disappointed that it was crammed into the end of the book, though I think the ending was ultimately a good decision. I think there were some pacing problems and I got a little lost in certain places- wait, are we still in France?! Total fluke that I read this in June and I really had no idea what the book was about, it was just mentioned in an interview of an author I really like. I mentioned to a friend that I was reading it, and she said that it's her favorite book!

Llegué al libro a través de una recomendación y me ha gustado mucho la arquitectura literaria que propone el autor para plantear la misma temática, a través de la mirada de diferentes personajes en distintas épocas.½

Meh.... first book of 92nd street Y international literature class.

I really wanted to like this book. It's about a hypersexualized handsome haughty Brit who prances about London's upper crust hunting for young prey in the Clubs and gymnasiums and public parks. The writing's honest about the depravities, the elitism, the frivolousness of his life -- and, above all, the gay sex. And that was what I loved about this book: It is an honestly-told awful life, and so much fun to read. As social criticism, it was superb. But there came a point in the book when the main plotline started to loom larger and larger on the horizon, and the old man's diary started to be excerpted in larger and larger word-counts, and the midnight instinct to fall asleep rather than vigorously read starts to weigh larger and larger on the eyelids, when I decided to call it quits. This book is hereby abandoned, but not because it was awful inasmuch as it was starting to go a different direction than I wanted it to, and I have better things to read.

I understand why this book was nominated for the Booker Prize. Alan Hollinghurst created an intricate web of family relationships and secrets. The book narrates the story of a family through several generations (from pre-World War I to XXI's century) as well as people close to said family but, ultimately, it revolves around Cecil Valance, the 'fictional' poet that dies in the First War leaving a mystery that few know about and that a biographer tries to find out, as his legacy.
The Stranger's Child is also about the evolution of homosexuality (how it is seen by society) through the years.
The descriptions of the victorian houses and gardens as well as London and it's surrounding villages and cities were very well done and helped visualise the novel a great deal more vividly.


Ham Spray House, Wiltshire, c 1932. Photograph: Frances Partridge/Getty Images


A country hall in Shrivenham, Berkshire. The book's family homes are inspired by such properties. Getty Images/Fox Photos Stringer


Image Source

In early 1980s London, Nick Guest walks an interestingly fine line. He's a postgraduate student lodging with the family of a member of parliament. He's gay. And he's not entirely closed off about it. But the family is accepting, so it all seems okay.
But even in the 80s, prejudice against gays was more than just the norm. Many of the guys that Nick finds are still closeted themselves. And Nick finds himself having to make some choices about the men he chooses to be with. Secrets aren't uncommon in Nick's world, but he's not usually the one who is keeping them.

Add to that the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, and Nick certainly faces some challenges. But he's not going to let them hold him back from living his life.

But Nick might just find that when one lives in a house of cards, it just takes a light breeze for it all to come crashing down.

--

I saw the film version of this a few years ago, and I'm still trying to decide if I liked that or the book better. What I do like about this story is that it's one that's not usually told. Yes, there are plenty of historical novels that take place in London. And there are many m/m stories that take place in the 80s and address the AIDS epidemic. But I feel like this may be the first I've read that combines both. Most stories on that topic I've read seem to be US-based.

There's also something about Nick's tentative status as observer/participant that makes this one resonate for me. There are those moments in live where we find ourselves in a place where we're not entirely sure why we're there. We feel a bit out of our element. It's not our world, but now we live in it. And at those times, it can be hard to figure out how to fit in. This is one of those stories.

Set in London in 1983, The Swimming-Pool Library centres the promiscuous lifestyle of homosexual Will Beckwith, an aristocratic young man, who spends his days idling and picking up other gay men. When, one day,he saves the life of Charles Nantwich, an octogenarian peer, a friendship develops. When he was much younger Lord Nantwich served in the foreign service in Africa and he gives Will his old diaries in the hope that he will write his biography.

As Will reads through the diaries we discover that, despite the 60 year age difference, there are many parallels between the lives of the two men. Both come from privileged backgrounds, led self-indulgent lifestyles spent pursuing young men for casual sex with both showing a preference for black men. However, whilst Nantwich was forced to conceal his sexual preferences Will lives in a society that not only tolerates homosexuality but also one that must conceal any prejudices it may still retain.

The similarity of the two characters’ youth can certainly be read as a comment on the ruling class where a colonial sense of entitlement especially towards ethnic minorities, even if inadvertent, means that changes to habits and attitudes are slow to materialise.

Extracts from Lord Nantwich’s diary, with its depictions of repressed homosexuality, breaks up the main narrative which is liberally peppered with graphic sex scenes. Yet a sense of loneliness pervades the book, many of the characters live solitary existences, interspersed by wild, but ultimately meaningless sexual encounters.

There is undoubtedly a certain elegance to the prose but overall the plot felt meandering and aimless. Will seems incapable of questioning let alone altering his lifestyle no matter what befalls him. In truth, the novel felt over-sexed to the point of tedium and the sexual interludes seem to serve no purpose other than to show the increasingly liberal attitudes of both the reading public and society in general has become. Although admittedly this may be because today we are armed with the knowledge of the AIDS epidemic that occurred only a few years after this book was set. The book is populated almost exclusively by promiscuous homosexual men meaning that overall this felt like a celebration of a gay sub-culture, but little more. On more than one occasion I was tempted to throw in the towel and give up but persevered in the hope that it would come to some conclusion only to be ultimately left sadly disappointed.