Hollinghurst's Beautiful Lines

WEEK 7. ALAN HOLLINGHURST, THE LINE OF BEAUTY (2004)

‘A winning novel that is exciting, brilliantly written and gets deep under the skin of the Thatcherite Eighties’ – Chris Smith, chair of the judges, 19th October 2004

‘Booker Won by Gay Sex’ – Daily Express headline, 20th October 2004

Alan Hollinghurst was born in Stroud and spent thirteen years on the staff of the Times Literary Supplement. He had previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994. Andrew Davies’s adaptation of The Line of Beauty was broadcast by the BBC in 2006.

Editions:

Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, (London: Picador, 2004).

2004 Shortlist:

Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Colm Tóibín, The Master
Gerard Woodward, I’ll Go to Bed at Noon

2004 Judges:

Chris Smith MP (chair), Tibor Fischer, Robert Macfarlane, Rowan Pelling, Fiammetta Rocco

Topics:

• Sexuality and the Modern Novel.
• Tapping in to the Past: Henry James and the 1980s.
• The Luxury of Style and the Lowest Common Denominator.

Reviews:

Geoff Dyer, ‘The Last Summer’, The Sunday Telegraph, (28 March 2004).
Andrew Crumey, ‘Marque of the Master Craftsman’, Scotland on Sunday, (4 April 2004)
Alfred Hickling, ‘Between the Lines’, The Guardian, (10 April 2004)
Peter Conradi, ‘Art and the Cruelty that Goes with It’, The Independent on Sunday, (11 April 2004)
Gregory Woods, ‘Love, Loss and the Tory Story’, The Independent, (16 April 2004)
Thomas Jones, ‘Welly-Whanging’, London Review of Books, (6 May 2004)

Criticism:

There's little of this, especially for Hollinghurst's later books. Take a look at this brief entry by Nick Rennison in the Routledge Contemporary British Novelists volume for instance.