The Line of Beauty

Reviews

A magnificent comedy of manners. Hollinghurst's alertness to the tiniest social and tonal shifts never slackens, and positively luxuriates in a number of unimprovably droll set pieces . . . [an] outstanding novel. In this saga about the Thatcher years Alan Hollinghurst writes harsh but deeply informed social satire from within, just as Proust did. Hollinghurst is never mocking or caricatural but subtly observant and completely participant. He writes the best prose we have today. He brings the eloquence of a George Eliot together with the sexiness and visual acuity of a Nabokov. His finest novel to date. One can't get enough of Hollinghurst's sentences . . . If you value style, wit, and social satire in your reading, don't miss this elegant and passionate novel. Hollinghurst has placed his gay protagonist within a larger social context, and the result is his most tender and powerful novel to date, a sprawling and haunting elegy to the 1980s. Mr. Hollinghurst's great gift as a novelist is for social satire as sharp and transparent as glass, catching his quarry from an angle just an inch to the left of the view they themselves would catch in the mantelpiece mirror . . . The Line of Beauty is unlikely to be surpassed. Almost perfectly written . . . this novel has the air of a classic. An affecting work of art. Hollinghurst's prose is a genuine achievement—lavish, poised, sinuously alert . . . The Line of Beauty is an ample and sophisticate delight, charged with hundreds of delicate impressions and insignts, and scores of vital and lovely sentences. It is at once domestic and political, psychological and historical. It is funny, moving, and finally despairing. Line for line, Hollinghurst's novel about London during the 1980s is the most exquisitely written book I've read in years. Witty observations about politics, society, and family open like little revelations on every page. [A] masterpiece with a skillfully rendered social panorama, a Proustian alertness to social nuance and a stylistic precision that recalls [James]. A rueful, snapshot-accurate portrait of this era. The Line of Beauty is itself a thing of beauty—an elegant and seductive novel . . . readers will hang on every bracing word. The Line of Beauty may perhaps be the author's most mature and accomplished work to date. It might also be his best. An intoxicating read . . . each sentence in this book rings as perfect and true as a Schubert sonata. A deliciously snarky portrait of Thatcherite Britain, but Hollinghurst also makes you believe in his characters, and nobody produced better prose this year. Expand reviews