Not another throw-away bestseller, 'The Line of Beauty' has the depth and qualities of a true classic. While it does have several explicit sexual scenes, the writing is focused on artistic and literary themes, psychology and character development, along with a great deal of Wildean irony and decadence.
Since I have not yet read the novels of Henry James, I failed to understand the many Jamesian allusions. But I did quite enjoy the Jabberwock allusion about the Prime Minister: "'She's put this country on its feet!...[said Lady Partridge, the grandmother] She showed them in the Falklands, didn't she?' 'You mean she's a hideous old battleaxe,' muttered Catherine. 'She's certainly a manxome foe,' said Gerald. Sir Maurice looked blank. 'One wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of her.'" If one hasn't caught this allusion, illumination is available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwo...
As I finished reading the concluding scene with its daydream of mortality, I suddenly saw Nick's narrative in its entire book length as a virtual classic Greek tragic drama. ( )

Frustrated by his first brush with romance, Nick Guest feels he’s been “swept to the brink of some new promise,” and the moment is profoundly poignant. Though “The Line of Beauty” runs through a period scarcely more than thirty years in the past, time already seems to have rendered Margaret Thatcher’s England as misty and distant as something out of “Brideshead Revisited.” Could the world really have changed this much so quickly? That misty quality is deceptive. In this penetrating and mature work, Alan Hollinghurst employs a hard, sharp wit to delineate the sort of moral bankruptcy that attended the early days of the HIV pandemic. As in Hollinghurst’s “The Swimming Pool Library,” the contrast between the rather savage tale and his complex and contemplative style proves riveting.

At Oxford, the youthful main character obsesses over a friend from a wealthy background. Visiting their home, Nick finds himself seduced by the pleasures of wealth and yearns to “steep himself in the difficult romance of the family.” Someone should have warned him to be careful what he wished for. He becomes a chronic houseguest, and his initiation into the world of erotic love (for which he’s “achingly ready and completely unprepared”) is concomitant with his passage into a realm of privilege and prejudice. As in all his work, the author adroitly steers the tone through personal drama to scathing social satire. Along the way, he veers into a veritable tour of British literary icons from Austin to Waugh – with an especially satisfying journey through the heart of Henry James territory – without ever diminishing the impact of his own remarkable voice. ( )

The main character of this book is Nick Guest, a middle-class Oxford scholar hanging about the world of a very well-to-do, conservative political family in mid-eighties London, an aesthete obsessed with the idea of beauty, an admirer of beautiful boys and art and architecture and the writing of Henry James. The prose of the book itself is so beautiful that I stopped forty pages in and reread them just to savor the elegance of the language. It's the kind of book that makes me feel compelled to commit passages to memory. As a story, I found The Line of Beauty thought-provoking and filled with rich detail. It is enjoyable on so many levels, from the political to the personal, satirical to tragic. The characters are memorable and linger in my mind in all their flawed and endearing complexity. I enjoyed this book immensely! ( )

In The Line of Beauty, Nick Guest is a young, coke-snorting gay man from modest means, who, in early 1983, is invited to stay with the wealthy and well-bred Fedden family. Gerald Fedden is a Tory MP, an empty man who has mastered the art of superficial charm that comes with his station. Nick, already an outsider by his gay status in this Thatcherite era, falls in love with the Fedden family and their lifestyle, eventually choosing a lover who can supply him with the finer things in life. Nick is our travel guide through this world of detached privilege, while the realities of the outer world, including AIDS, threatens to disrupt it all. Alan Hollinghurst's impeccable prose and perfect rendering of this era in recent London history has won The Line of Beauty wide acclaim.

Pure pleasure and very reminiscent of Mrs. Dalloway: the townhouse in the heart of power, the magnificent bourgeois matron, the contrast between her and people who are in one way or another falling apart, the conclusion of everyday joy as the justification for living.

It's fascinating to see how much readers disagree about this book: the range of opinions on offer here — from "boring" to "brilliant" — demonstrates the strength of the LT reviewing system when applied to recent, bestselling books; the difficulty of deciding which opinion to trust shows the limitations of user reviews. Obviously, a lot of people decided to read this book because it had won a major literary prize, and some of those were readers who wouldn't normally be tempted to try Hollinghurst, and had trouble with the upper-middle-class English setting, the "high" literary style or the (rather minimal) descriptions of gay sex. That probably accounts for most of the "boring" or "disgusted" reviews, but it still leaves a biggish range of opinion from people who did approach it seriously and on its own terms. And I would agree that it is a difficult book to make your mind up about. There are a lot of different threads being developed in the book, and it's hard to work out which of them are really important.

I think it would be a mistake to see this as primarily a political novel. The venality of Tory ministers, the grasping nature of business in the eighties, AIDS, homophobia: these themes are all present in the book, but they've been chewed over ad nauseam by other writers already, and Hollinghurst isn't pretending to say anything new about them. We shouldn't forget that he is writing in 2004 with twenty years of hindsight, and that he's already been there and done that with The Swimming-pool Library (1988). He's clearly picked the eighties because the period is one he knows about, and because he believes he can apply that experience to give the reader some more general insights. Similarly, making the main viewpoint character gay is something that shouldn't have to be seen as a "political" choice any more: it is simply one of the available options, and the one that should come most naturally to an author who happens to be gay himself.

It is, obviously, a very literary project. The plot device of having a central character of modest origins and impeccable aesthetic sensibilities taken up by a wealthy and powerful family obviously resonates with things like Brideshead revisited, The great Gatsby (Nick Carraway!) and A dance to the music of time (Nick Jenkins!!) as well as with the book that is explicitly discussed in the text, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton (Fleda, not Nick). The measured, half-ironic style is reminiscent of James, Powell, or Forster, and the wealth of minor characters is very Powell-ish. Hollinghurst is clearly just as comfortable writing within this tradition as we are reading in it, and there is perhaps an important point to be made about the way in which the tradition can accommodate insider trading, coke-snorting and the Iron Lady just as well as it was able to cope with the horrors of fascism, Stalinism and two world wars.

The title suggests that what Hollinghurst finds most important in the book might be the debate about aesthetics implied by the recurrent image of Hogarth's "line of beauty". Obviously, the choice of Hogarth is interesting, as someone who combined social and political satire with theorising about the nature of beauty, just as Hollinghurst seems to be doing here. The actual shape of the line of beauty doesn't seem to be as important here as the exploration that takes place in the novel of the relationships between power, money, sex and beauty. Nick is notionally employed by Wani as an "aesthetician", i.e. as someone who appreciates beauty on behalf of his employer, just as Nick's father, an antique dealer, converts money into beauty and back again for his aristocratic clients. Gerald is stuck in a destructive vicious circle, in which power begets money and money power. He has poor taste (he likes the music of Richard Strauss), but his money has also bought him beauty, in the shape of marriage to Rachel and access to the aesthetic sensibility of the Kessler family. And of course, in the end the people with the power and the money survive, whilst those who only bring beauty into the equation (like Nick's father, and Nick's early lover Leo) are the ones who suffer. Beauty is desirable, but it is not essential, and in the Thatcherite ideal it is power itself that is beautiful (Gerald is always going on about the Prime Minister's blue eyes).

I'm not sure how far all that takes us, but it is interesting and thought-provoking up to a point. A bit more difficult is the difficulty we face in identifying with Nick, upon whom the author seems to have wished all the unattractive features of (his own??) youth. He is self-centred, pompous, snobbish, and far too self-assured in his artistic judgments. The sort of person of which there was no shortage at Oxford in the early eighties, perhaps, but not necessarily someone one would wish to spend an entire book with. Possibly we were all a bit like that in our twenties, but it's pleasanter not to be reminded of it... ( )

The most enjoyable feature of the book for me was Hollinghurst's extremely perceptive attention to the nuances of human interactions. It is true that the upshot of this attention is often a rather banal point about the hypocrisies of the rich and powerful. And, as others have commented, the book starts to feel repetitive around its middle. But just when you think the story is not going anywhere, there is just enough development to reward your sticking with the book. And fans of the high literary style will enjoy the finely balanced sentences and psychological exploration. I was somewhat inexplicably drawn into the book and read it surprisingly compulsively. I'm looking forward to trying some of Hollinghurst's others. ( )

This is a very good book that I found compelling and with a complexity that I appreciated the most after I'd turned the last page. Scene: London, the early eighties. A shy, newly out 20(21?) yo Oxford grad finds himself lodging with the posh family of a school chum, the son of an egotistical Tory MP. Supposedly working on a thesis on Henry James, Nick Guest (rather obviously named, ya think? First and last.) tries to manage a discreet and active sex life and his place as retainer to a high society family under Margaret Thatcher’s thrall. Without adopting or rejecting their political philosophy, he adores his new family, which adopts him as a sort of useful pet, especially adept in dealing with their mentally ill daughter, someone they do not particularly want to deal with. Like many very good books, its impact is not felt until it is over. I have particular admiration for the way Hollinghurst ended the story: with a bang. It was mostly a pleasure to read. Some details seemed tedious until I realized how they underscored the effect of the conclusion. It’s a book that leaves you thinking. Really, what more can you ask? ( )

Picking up at the point in time where 'The Swimming-Pool Library' left off, 'The Line of Beauty' traces the further history of a decade of change and tragedy. ( )

Hollinghurst writes beautifully and perceptively, and the story/protagonist really allows a heterosexual reader (at least this one) to get an insight into what it is like to be gay in a straight society, especially, perhaps, during the 80s, when the book takes place, a time when the idea of being unashamedly "out" was still a fairly new idea that the straight world was still getting used to. So many little assumptions, so many off-hand comments, often made innocently but still serving to remind the gay person in the room that he/she is still considered an "other." The book begins as a tour de force, and then settles down for many, many pages to add on small observations amid seemingly minor and repetitive story points, until finally adding up to a very powerful ending. The problems with the book, for me, were that that middle portion really did begin to get repetitive, despite the beautiful writing. I thought the point had been made and then continued to be made again and again until I was ready for the story to resume already. It is all made good at the end, but still, there was a period of reading when I felt restless. The other problem, for me, is that the book takes place mainly among the English upper class. I kind of feel like the foibles of the rich, as humorously as they're examined here, are sort of easy pickings. At any rate, I have less interest in the troubles of the rich than I have in the experiences of the regular walking around folk, as it were. Those are personal sticking points only, however. This is a book to be highly--very highly--recommended. ( )

I read this book for the Highland Park Library book club and found it to be beautifully written. It was a bit slow to start with but I hated it to end. It was a sort of written in a circle. This was a Booker prize winner. ( )

Britain's most literary gay author: Others have written well of this book. I simply wanted to add that I think Hollinghurst in general fills a niche in the gay fiction genre, in that he is first and foremost a richly talented writer with acute observational skills, and intensely intimate introspective capabilities (forgive the alliteration). That said his writing is also hot. He unabashedly explores the sexual lives of his characters, which makes him exquisitely modern and insouciant. Straight women friends of mine have enjoyed his work as much as my gay male friends precisely for this quality. Seldom does an avid reader come away from a novel with such a sense of satisfaction and intellectual fulfillment. Alan if you read this - we are all waiting for more.

Hollinger integrates the gay scene with the frivolities and politics of the well-to-do in 1980's England. You experience all of this through Nick, the novel's gay protagonist who navigates his way through both worlds which ultimately collide. A well-written, absorbing read. Winner of the Booker Man Prize in 2004. ( )

A young gay man from an average middle class background mingles with the rich and powerful in Thatcher's 80s. The main character is a pretentious snob who it is hard to like. The rest of the characters are equally unlikeable - I'm struggling to think of a single one who had any redeeming features. This made it a hard book to love as I really didn't care what happened to any of them and wasn't sorry to see their demise. However, despite not liking this book much, images and characters from the book have stayed in my memory and it has created a lasting impression on me, where books I've enjoyed more have been more forgettable. ( )

Alan Hollinghurst updates "The Great Gatsby" in this 2004 Booker Prize winner. Set in Margaret Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s, the novel shows young Nick from the provinces ingratiating himself with the rich and powerful, while at the same time exploring London's free-spirited gay scene. There's exquisite writing here: beautiful scene painting as Nick becomes aware of hypocrisy among his political friends and as the darkness of AIDS casts a shadow on his private life. (At times, you may be reminded of Andrew Holleran's "Dancer from the Dance".) Hollinghurst confirms his position as one of the finest writers working in Britain today. ( )

B+ rating. Read my full review here: http://literaturecrazy.blogspot.com/2... ( )

Nick Guest is a 21-year-old, gay Oxford graduate in Thatcher's England of 1983. He is temporarily living in the home of his friend Toby, whose father Gerald is a wealthy, conservative Member of Parliament. The story -- at least the first part of it -- deals primarily with Nick's early explorations of his sexual identity, as he experiences his first intimate homosexual relationship with a man named Leo. The book also explores wealth and classism, with Nick as a voyeur into Toby's class of wealthy socialites and Leo's working-class family.

Alas, having read through Part I with only mild interest, I just didn't feel like carrying on with this book. None of the characters were particularly likeable. And, although this book was published fairly recently (2004), it seemed as if the "gay story" were meant to either shock or titillate the reader instead of exploring the very real emotional issues that are dealt with in the process of self-discovery and coming out.

Basically, it's just a coming out story. And it happens to be set in the 80's and there happens to be a politician and sex and drugs in the mix. Oh the lies! Oh the scandals! Big whoop. I guess I was expecting something more profound from a Man Booker Prize winner. I'm reselling it on Amazon.ca if anyone is interested. I'm sure plenty of people will find the homosexuality/sex/drugs/politics mix irresistible. ( )

Total yawnfest. Just never managed to get into the story (boring) or give a toot about any of the characters on any level (wooden and boring). Totally unimpressed by the "shocking/graphic content" - I'd say it was only shocking if you've been extremely sheltered your whole life. Oh wait, you mean because it's GAY sex? Please...
As a social critique/investigation into the lives and politics of the upper-class in 80's Thatcherland, the novel was marginally more interesting - but not very. This was a monumental struggle to finish.

I’m ashamed to say that I stopped reading this novel in Chapter 8, the second chapter in the second section, about 175 pages in this edition. The reason? boredom.

The boredom was a problem from the start. The characters are not particularly interesting, there’s no plot, and the writing is not impressive. Any one of those is usually enough to keep me interested in a literary novel. The novel seems to be an examination of the homosexual lifestyle of the 1980s. So it’s a polemical novel, which means it probably has a point, and that point is probably that promiscuous, unprotected sex is hazardous to your mental and physical health. Well, the author was taking too long to make any point to keep me interested.

Which leaves me asking why this novel even got published. Must have been the male homosexual angle.

Standard disclaimer: I’m nobody, why should you listen to my opinion of this book. It won the Man Booker prize in 2004, so the prize committee liked it. Makes me wonder if it wasn’t a type of affirmative action award - reward this novel because of some perceived slight for this class of book in the past, regardless of it’s real merit. ( )

It took me two attempts to read this book but I'm glad I persisted with it. I really enjoyed it in the end. It's about a boy who stays with a family who are quite wealthy and the father is a politician (from what I can recall). The boy is gay and actually falls in love with his friend. The book is about how the boy turns into a young man and forms relationships with various individuals during a time when AIDs was hitting the headlines, and the effect that had on the gay community.

The book is funny in part, and very well written. ( )

ALAN HOLLINGHURST | THE LINE OF BEAUTY | 2004

MY CRITIQUE
"Brilliant & perceptive."
Nick is working on a doctorate on Henry James and perhaps that's why the novel almost seems ghost written by the famous writer with James' fondness for almost excruciating attention to detail and social nuance. As with other British novels, the peculiarly British idiom must be solved or merely ignored as irrelevant to the plot since the usual dictionary offers no definitions. (E.g., taking firsts or seconds at Oxford) . With Hollinghurst's fondness for reveling in obviously knowledgeable details of furnishings, architecture, and classical music, one wonders just how much of a cultural snob the author himself might be. And at the end those are the things he regrets losing. Beside an unstated homophobia, racism seems to be an undercurrent in this level of society (e.g., when Lady Partridge, Gerald's mother, remarks about having to avoid the colored doctors while in hospital.)
The novel has a lot going for it: explicit sex, drugs, political scandal, scads of money, the dissection of a morally bankrupt era, acute powers of description. It's both lurid and intellectually challenging. Nick carefully records the excesses but at the same time seems to be an impartial observer.
We see the world of the rich & privileged of Thatcher's England through Nick's outsider eyes. He's a temporary ("Guest") outsider due to social class, due to his intelligence & sensitivity, and due to his sexual orientation, but he is also attracted to the trappings of wealth and privilege. Nick's only true ally in the household is Catherine, a manic-depressive, who finally inadvertently brings about his own undoing along with the rest of the family. Gerald is a snob who cares nothing for the constituents he represents as MP, and which are in fact where Nick's own parents live.
Rich ironic prose that often reminded me of Waugh: Sophie's mother, Lady Tipper, gets into a confused argument with Nick about AIDS and about how the gays "had it coming." Nick replies that, “certainly, homosexuals will have to be careful now, or just switch to oral sex, which is less dangerous. "Kissing, you mean," comments Lady Tipper. The subtle racism of Lady Partridge. At a concert given at Kensington house: "there were hints on some faces that it could be thought rather bad form to make quite so much noise indoors." "there seems to be an absolute mania for concerts.... This is the second one I've been to this year." Toby's superficial girlfriend Sophie who aspires to be an actress and makes a big thing about her performance in a Wilde play in which she has two words. A young woman at dinner who mistakes Henry James for Joyce Cary.
While Nick is smoothly tolerated by the Feddens as a house guest due to his mild manner, on the side he's having wild public sex with the working class Leo, his first relationship, a black government employee, and later with Wani, a rich son of a Lebanese merchant, with whom he decides to set up a glossy magazine named Ogee, dedicated to beauty and with whom he becomes a regular coke snorter. "The Ogee organisation is in fact no more than a rich boy's distraction" But Nick himself seems to remain outside of both ends of the social classes represented by his two lovers.
British papers have noted that this is the first exlplicitly gay novel to win the Booker Prize in its 36-year history. (So much for their cosmopolitan sophistication: America's National Book Award went to an equally explicit gay book way back in 1992, an autobiography called Becoming a Man.)

Re the novel's title. The line of beauty comes from Hogarth's work the "Analysis of Beauty" and refers to a purely decorative and not structural double curve. Nick comes up with the word "ogee," used in architecture to describe a double curve: "The ogee curve was pure expression, decorative not structural.... This line of beauty is exemplified in several scenes: the dip & rise of his lover's rear, the line of coke, the rise & fall of fortunes in England, the rise & fall of the sex-obsessed 80's ending in AIDS. This modern "line of beauty" seems to result more in degradation than in the pleasure of beauty. The scene in the bathroom with Wani & Tristao is not so much sexually provocative as it seems degrading to those involved.:
"Tristão bent to snort his line, and Wani felt his cock and Nick felt his arse.... Wani was down on his knees, trying clumsily to do justice to the thing he always wanted. His pants were undone, but his own little penis, depressed by the blitz or blizzard of coke, was puckered up, almost in hiding. He was lost, beyond humiliation -- it was what you paid for. He sniffed as he licked and sucked, and gleaming mucus, flecked with blood and undissolved powder, trailed out of his famous nose into the waiter's lap. "
"Nick loved the etiquette of the thing, the chopping with a credit card, the passing of the rolled note, the procedure courteous and dry, 'all done with money', as Wani said

And so everything suddenly (too suddenly?) unravels. Leo dies of AIDS & Wani is on his last legs. Gerald is involved in a sex and financial scandal. Nick's expulsion from the household when his sex romps are uncovered. This seems to be the author's moral stance coming to the forefront. Re his handling of the role of the gay man in society: One critic feels that Hollinghurst seems to say that the homosexual is a figure always doomed to unhappiness, solitary and lonely, without family or friends, always nostalgic for a bosom that has always, if only secretly, rejected him. This seems to me a rather dated stance today, although it probably held true back in the 80's.
Also, the pacing may be a little slow for our age of rapid sound bites and fast cut editing but then I found it to be an opportunity to luxuriate in the richness of the prose, the witty social observations, and boldness of the sexually charged scenes. The prose is sometimes very graphic, sometimes restrained to the point of aloofness, and often sensitive and perceptive: (Re a new relationship: “He lay wide-eyed in a kind of dazzled grief, in which everything they’d done together was vivid to him, and the strain of potential loss was as keen as the thrill of success.) An explicitly gay novel with well met literary aspirations. There's not a strong narrative drive but more a series of vignettes of people coming together in small groups and large and the dynamics that ensue.
Hollinghurst creates a whole universe and strong characterizations, however remote they might be to our own American experiences.

aes·thet·ics
1. the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments.
2. the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.

HOGARTH'S LINE OF BEAUTY "Analysis of Beauty" 1753

Here is a bit of advice handed down through the ages. The artist Hogarth shares with us that anything alive is best expressed with a curved, "s" shaped line, while the straight line is best used for anything "dead". ...may we not also imagine it probable, that the symbol in the triangular glass, might be similar to the line Michael Angelo recommended; especially, if it can be proved, that the triangular form of the glass, and the serpentine line itself, are the two most expressive figures that can be thought of to signify not only beauty and grace, but the whole order of form. (The Analysis of Beauty, xvii)
Hogarth's work was instrumental in the development and popularization of physiognomics in the eighteenth century.
Physiognomics was the 'science' of interpreting human character, intelligence, and virtue by analyzing physical appearances. The practice was based upon the belief that exterior traits revealed a person's inner life. In addition to congenital physical characteristics, many physiognomists also considered gesture, facial expression, and disease as legitimate signs to be read.

SUMMARY
1986: The Love Chord
Nick Guest is a young (21) man at the start of the novel, boarding in the upscale household of his recent college chum, Toby, on whom he has had an early crush. Toby’s parents are, Gerald, a new rather snobby conservative MP in Thatcher’s government and Rachel, his wife. They are both generously accommodating to Nick (their “guest”), but also subtly condescending re Nick’s middle class roots and his sexual orientation. Nick himself is half in the closet and seems to exist in three different world’s none of which he’s completely comfortable in: the gay demimonde, the aristocracy, and his middle class background. He feels himself to be an outsider and seems on the periphery of all the “posh white hetero” parties & dinners he attends as
Nick’s first relationship is with Leo, a handsome black man who is also somewhat closeted from his own family. Nick is apparently still a virgin (?) But is resolved to lose it and is very much sexually obsessive. While in the company of the upper class heteros, he summons images of his sexual encounters with Leo and arouses himself with the slightest pretext.
Gerald drives Nick & Rachel to her brother Kessler’s mansion Hawkeswood, to attend the big upper class bash for Toby’s birthday. Hawkeswood seems to be a combination art museum and luxury hotel more than a home and Hollinghurst takes an opportunity to revel in the detail of furnishings and architecture. They are joined by Toby & Sophie, his long time girlfriend who’s an aspiring actress but not seemingly high on Tobie list of priorities. Also, in attendance is Catherine, Toby’s sister, & Russell, her latest in a long line of boyfriends. At the party, Nick runs into a former classmate, Paul Tompkins, nicknamed Polly suitable for the queen he is. Also at the party is Wani Ouradi, son of a rich Lebanese merchant, who introduces his girlfriend, Martine. Nick also has a crush on Wani and an immediate attraction to a dark eyed waiter, Tristao with whom he later arranges a tryst. Let’s face it, Nick is young and sexually driven while attempting to maintain a more respectable facade. The plight of most of us when 21. Nick later joins the young folks smoking dope & drinking in Toby’s room after the ceremonies and winds up missing his date with the waiter.
Later back at Gerald’s place, Leo drop by & sweeps Nick away to visit Leo’s ex, Pete, an older caustic antique store owner. Then later a visit with Leo’s mother & sister, has Nick feeling the outsider yet again, but this time due to the social class of the black family and the cultural separation from the extreme religiosity of Leo’s mother. The atmosphere is strained by the secrecy of he and Leo’s relationship. Yet one more example of the ingrained ignorance of straight assumptions.
1986 • To Whom Do You Beautifully Belong?
Nick is with Wani now. They are at a local gay swim hole where they pick up Rick. Nick is working for and sleeping with Wani. Nick still seems a bit of a snob, dropping phrases from Henry James irrelevantly into conversation. (“The joy of matutinal steel”) Wani invites Nick to his home. His father Bernard is a rather vulgar Lebanese immigrant who has become wealthy in real estate (shopping centers). Wani is not interested in following in his father’s footsteps but instead wants to startup a rather esoteric magazine with Nick’s assistance. Of course, their relationship remains deeply closeted from Wani’s family which exhibits more of the naivety of the conservative straight world.
Nick scores some coke from Wadi’s pusher, Ronnie, an underworld type that he brings back to his room. Nick then attends a fund raising event for Gerald in his home: a young pianist. The event further underscores the psychological isolation of both Nick & Wani as gay men and Nick’s role is peripheral and irrelevant due to his social station, and his social tolerance which is not the case for most of those in attendance, specifically Wani’s father in his treatment of a server. Wani is more deeply closeted and has a showy relationship with Martine. Is she his beard or is he truly bisexual? Nick services Wani while listening to Catherine & Jasper doing it next door.
Nick is on school break at his own home after having received a car as a gift from Wani. They all await the arrival of Gerald who’s coming by for a drink after the festivities at a local park. Gerald’s distaste for having to be in Barwick is barely contained. Meanwhile, Nick is thinking about the “Gents” room in the park and its possibilities. Gerald is then rather awkwardly entertained by Nick’s parents. Nick then drops off Gerald and Penny, his assistant at the Crown Hotel for the next venue. Nick discovers that Gerald has left his speech on the car seat and in returning it catches Gerald & Penny in a compromising situtation, but they are unaware of him. Nick is shocked.
As Toby, Wani, & Nick approach Gerald’s French mansion on a trip to France, Nick reflects on how they are all strangers to each other. Toby & Wani share the assumptions of wealth but not the sexual relationship that Nick shares with Wani.
At poolside, Catherine’s newest boyfriend Jasper, seems to be flaunting his sexual attractiveness in front of Nick, who tries to ignore it. He doesn’t much care for Jasper, in spite of the line of beauty showing through his skimpy swim suit. Later Toby & Nick are left alone @ the manse, the residual sexual tension is once more evoked, while others, including Sophie’s parents, the Tippers, are taken to a lavish lunch by Gerald in his effort to impress the blasé, stuffy older couple. They are unadventurous, squeamish, and self-absorbed.
After the others return, a call to Rachel informs the company of the sudden death of Catherine’s godfather of AIDS and the idea of it lingers for awhile unspoken until Catherine finally forces the admittance of Pat’s illness and orientation. The hatefully prejudiced response of the Tippers provokes Nick into revealing himself to them. Later, Catherine comes to Nick’s room with the purpose of uncovering the mystery of just who’s rubber Lady Partridge had discovered in the toilet, knowing full well that since she & Jasper had not used a rubber that it must have been Nick & Wani. Nick then tells Catherine of Wani’s obsession with porno.
Gerald seems overwhelmed with work and Rachel suggests asking Penny out to help with the paperwork. Nick can’t help but feel complicit in the knowledge that he secretly holds of their alliance. Lionel then brings around his gifts of silver for Gerald and Rachel’s 25th anniversary.
In anticipation of the PM’s visit, security men come by make sure the home is secure and Nick is a bit paranoid about the coke he’s stashed in a drawer, but then takes a line to calm his nerves. Later he gives the rest of the coke to Toby to help him rev up for his speech. Thatcher then arrives looking, per Nick, like a country & western singer. The waiter, Tristao, shows up and Catharine and Nick engage in their usual ironic banter about all the stuffed shirts at the gathering. After sniffing another line, Nick boldly asks the PM, who’s already a couple of sheets to the win, to dance. Afterwards, up in the bathroom, we find Wani, Nick, & Tristao and more coke. After a monetary exchange, Tristao is serviced by Wani.

THE END OF THE STREET - 1987
Rosemary, Leo’s sister, visits Nick at work to tell him that Leo has died of AIDS. She has brought the letters Leo received in response to his ad, including the one Nick himself wrote. In writing a letter of condolence to Leo’s mother, he recalls a line from Henry James, which once struck him as arch and facetious but which now rang true because they were written by someone whose life had been walked through, time and again, by death. Then he envisions himself in six months time writing a similar letter to Wani’s parents, foreshadowing his death in the next chapter.
ONE YEAR LATER
Nick meets with Brad & Treat, two pretentious American filmakers. Wani joins them, now utterly ravaged by the disease that was hinted at in the last chapter. Once again, as at other times in the novel, the talk is peppered with the names of people in passing that I found difficulty in identifying but then realized that there were unimportant to the plot. Sophie and her new beau are lunching at a nearby table. The proposed film will be made based on Nick’s script for James’ novel “The Spoils of Poynton”, but Nick is less than enthralled by these 2 stupid Americans who haven’t even read the James novel. Nick drives Wani back home in Wani’s car. In their short talk, Wani reveals that Martine, his supposed girlfriend, had been kept on a retainer by his mother for his father’s sake. Wani then alludes to a potential financial scandal involving Gerald. Back at Kensington, the atmosphere’s tense & Catherine in her manic state insists on going for a drive and Nick accompanies her. She drives to Badger’s fuck pad only to intercept Penny coming out and Gerald inside the flat. Later Catherine mentions this indiscretion to her ex-beau Russell, who’s in the media, and it winds up a story in the Mirror. At the same time, she spills the beans about Nick & Wani’s gay sex romp at the Minister’s home. At this point, Nick’s life is broken open. Toby asks him to leave the house. Barry Grooms visits Gerald and rabidly attacks Nick’s reputation with vicious antigay insults. (Barry himself is a multiple adulterer who has disowned his own son). Gerald tells Nick that he wants him out of the house today and Nick seems to acquiesce.
Nick later returns to the house after everyone has gone to a wedding and he’s alone for a while to bid farewell to all the accouterments of a lost life. Penny shows up to collect some things. Penny vows not to give up Gerald. Nick leaves and has the sudden realization that his AIDS test would probably prove positive and he projects himself into a future without him with regret & longing. His regret seems to be more concerned with the loss of the beauty of his world: The architecture, the music, the literature, the art, and the beauty of certain men.

Cor anglais: a kind of oboe, etc. ( )

http://occamsrazorlibrary.blogspot.co... ( )

Story of a young gay man who experiences the sex, drug and party scene of 1980s London during the Thatcher years. He rejects his middle-class roots and Oxford training as he becomes more and more involved with the family of a wealthy member of parliament and Thatcher loyalist. This was made into a pretty good British mini-series. ( )

Such beautiful sentences!