Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly funny, this is a major work by one of our finest writers. An affair with a young black clerk gives him his first experience of romance, but it is a later affair with a beautiful millionaire that will change his life drastically and bring into question the larger fantasies of a ruthless decade.įramed by the two general elections that returned Margaret Thatcher to power, The Line of Beauty unfurls through four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, Alan Hollinghursts The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatchers 1980s. In an era of endless possibility, he finds himself able to pursue his own private obsession with beauty-a prize as compelling to him as power and riches to his friends. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.It is the summer of 1983, and twenty-year-old Nick Guest has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby-whom Nick had idolized at Oxford-and Catherine, highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions, who becomes both a friend to Nick and his uneasy responsibility.Īs the boom years of the mid-eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in matters of politics and money, becomes caught up in the Feddens' world-its grand parties, its surprising alliances, its parade of monsters both comic and menacing. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Britain.

It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man’s collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to. The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst’s Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens’ world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty. In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 3.74 avg. There was the soft glare of the flash – twice – three times – a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, ‘Prime Minister, would you like to dance?’

The line of beauty novel