I’m having a hard time writing a review for Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair. It’s a book that defies easy summarization; even the cover synopsis doesn’t really describe the book I read and probably did more harm than good to my understanding. The story is told in five sections. The first takes place at Oxford during the early 1940’s, with the Blitz in full swing. Two of the characters have a brief affair, giving the book’s title its first meaning. The second section follows one […]
I’m following the whole Sparsholt affair scientifically
I am really glad I went into this novel with no real knowledge of the plot. It made a few of the turns more interesting, and one quite devastating…even though it turned out I was wrong. There are no twists here, though, as happens in life. This novel is on the tail end (maybe) of a renewed interest in WWII, especially the RAF and the Blitz. And this novel picks up right at the beginning, at Oxford, during the Blitz. We begin with the journal […]
“It’s just make-believe for rich people”
I enjoyed this novel just fine, but I will be thinking about it for awhile. For one, it’s just so effing clever in its construction and its story. In a way, it does the opposite of what I was annoyed by in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul, where he makes explicit reference to an author he’s parodying. This is a Henry James novel if homosexuality were not criminalized in England in the 19th/20th century. I know this because our main character is a graduate student […]
The Spell–marking love and despair.
Alan Hollinghurst is one of the authors who featured in my dissertation, so I’ve been trying to work my way through all his novels. The Line of Beauty was the text in my second chapter, then I read The Stranger’s Child and The Swimming-Pool Library in summer 2012. I read The Folding Star last year for CBR6, and was not a super huge fan of it. The Spell is the last of Hollinghurst’s books I hadn’t read, so I decided to “collect” another author. You […]
If this book were a T-Pain song, it would be called, “I’m in love with a student.”
I’ve read 3 of Alan Hollinghurst’s novels, and I’ve been meaning to read the other two for a few years now. That time has come when I’m starting to riffle through all the books I’ve borrowed from my school library and want to start taking them back, so that’s been a motivator for me. It’s not my favorite Hollinghurst by a long shot. If you’re going to read him, read The Line of Beauty. It’s deep and intricate and incredibly well-written, whereas The Folding Star […]
The Many Lines of Beauty
I first read this book two years ago for my Twentieth-Century British Lit. seminar with my dissertation director. It’s the novel that inspired my dissertation, so it holds a special place in my heart. It’s also one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Nick Guest is young, white, British, and gay in Margaret Thatcher’s England. He is a permanent houseguest at the Fedden home, the seeming picture of familial perfection. Gerald, the father, is an MP, and madly “in love” with Thatcher. Rachel, […]