SJane

I thought this was a great book, very well written, involving and socially relevant, and I’m surprised because I was kind of cool on it at the start, and a (gay) friend of mine asked why I wanted to read a book he found “suffocatingly gay.” I don’t know. Because it tells a good story? Because the writing is outstanding? Because I haven’t experienced so much gay sex ever? Well, all of those things were there!

The story is pretty much about working-class, gay Oxford grad Nick taking up residence in the home of his very rich, straight London friend, Toby, whom he lusts after, thus worming his way into the ultra-posh life of the wealthy political London scene of the Thatcher years. Nick becomes an unlikely surrogate son, as well as the unofficial caretaker of Toby’s manic-depressive sister. Toby’s father, the pompous and charismatic and finally despicable Gerald, is a Tory member of parliament, while Toby’s mother, mostly a benign presence, comes from serious money. There are plenty of other characters, including Margaret Thatcher herself, but more interestingly Nick’s lovers. The Thatcher years of course overlap with the age of AIDS, and those are the two dominating issues of the book. The novelist Henry James also figures big in the book, as Nick is doing graduate work on "The Master," as he's referred to.

In fact, AIDS, Henry James and the Thatcher years aren’t really topics I seek out, but the story was very well told and it deepens as it goes along, and Alan Hollinghurst writes excellent prose. What struck me most was how closely observed interactions were, for example, when Nick observes a journalist dancing with a politician:

“…it was true he did seem to be dancing with the Home Secretary, wooing him, capering in front of him, bending to him with new questions and springing back with startled enlightment at the answers – a procedure which the Home Secretary, who was heavy-footed and had no neck, couldn’t help but replicate in a clumsy but corteous way.”

There are marvelous phrasings, like “germ of catastrophe,” or “granite-like sparkle of charm.”

Hollinghurst also excels at describing that which is evoked, such as the smell of cigars:

“’Lionel hates it too,’ murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence of other men’s tastes and habits, and their readiness to impose them on their fellows.”

Strange to say, but in the end I felt the book could have been more emotionally devastating. I always go for that, but the telling was quite understated, which I also appreciate. In part that understatement may have less to do with the author than with the character Nick, and the social climbing that doesn’t turn out well for him.