E-Paper
Sarcastic tale of the 1980s
Alan Hollinghurst?s Booker long-listed The Line of Beauty drags us right back to the decade I hate the most.
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst
Picador
2004
Fiction
Pages: 320
Price: £ 9.99
ISBN: 033048320X
Paperback
I wish I’d never read Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker long-listed The Line of Beauty. Because it dragged me right back to the decade I hate the most - the 80s - and I was forced to relive times that are much better forgotten.
But that, I suppose, was Hollinghurst’s intention. To remind us of the decade of greed and brashness, of a time when money meant everything and anything you wanted was available for a price.
Nick Guest is an aesthete. Fresh from Oxford, he rents an attic room in friend Toby’s house. Toby is the son of Gerald Fedden, upcoming ministerial candidate whose aim in life is to be Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man.
Living on the periphery of the Feddens’ lives, Nick, a middle class boy, loves the power that rubs off on him. He’s proud he has access to the private gardens around the Feddens’ home — for keyholders only — and he shows off about his closeness to the rich and famous.
But he also never forgets that he’s only on the periphery of this powerful world, not powerful himself. He’s a bit lost too — gay and out of the closet as far as the Feddens and their friends go, but unable to tell his parents about it. And looking for love everlasting, but also aware that such a thing is not possible in the circles he prefers to move in.
Still, he does lead a life most people envy. His friends are all from the smart set and he lives off his lover Wani Ouradi, the son of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. Because of the Feddens, he meets — and dances with — Margaret Thatcher, hangs out with cabinet ministers, and has an entrée to both old money and new.
