The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alan HollinghurstEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01
ISBN: 033048320X
Number of pages: 501
Publisher: Picador USA
Book Reviews of The Line of Beauty
Book Review: A Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
William Hogarth is an 18th-century English artist famous for his satiricalnarrative painting series 'Marriage a la mode' and 'The Rake's Prgress'.He is less well known as a rococo theorist, but Alan Hollinghurst adoptsHogarth's concept of 'the line of beauty' - an asymmetrical, doublecurving line - as the title and thematic emblem for his fourth novel, amagnificent evocation of 80's Britain. Without question, this novel is hisbest yet.The previous novel, 'The Spell', was a dreamy pastoral withthe action - such as it was - arising organically from the characters'inner obsessions. To me, in this respect it seemed an advance on theprevious two novels, whose plots in retrospect seem ever so slightlycontrived. 'The Line of Beauty' sees a return to the ambitious plottingand social engagement of the first two books but with its emphasis on acharacter-driven plot is a completely unified and organicachievement.
It can be read as a modern 'Rake's Progress' - the rake inquestion being Hollinghurst's hero Nick Guest, whose rise and fall inThatcher's London the novel charts.
As in Hogarth, the action unfoldsin a series of grand set pieces crammed with sharply realised charactersand humorous detail. It's actually remarkable just how much of 'The Lineof Beauty' would be entirely familiar to Hogarth and his audience: aninnocent in London corrupted; the craze for chemical stimulants, money,power, status, sex - hypocritical politicians; parents at odds with theirchildren; arranged, loveless marriages; infidelity; prostitution; mentalilnness; a plague of sexually spread disease.
As in Hogarth, art has adouble edge: fatuously co-opted by ruling elites to bolster their status,it nevertheless has a subversive, ironic ability to comment on and mockthe action before it. The novel exhibits a staggeringly wide range ofreferences. Lightly handled, these form a richly textured ironiccounterpoint.
The arc of the story beautifully unfurls from the intimate early scenes toa series of grand social episodes fantastically realised in all theirsurface glamour and moral squalor. The approach to the Aids tragedy isstrikingly original and tough: for me it is all the more powerful for itscurtailed, apparently oblique handling.
With a writer who began hiscareer with a classic and whose every novel since has extended his range,it is possibly premature as well as fatuous to say he is writing now atthe peak of his powers. But surely the novel in English cannot get muchbetter than this.
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