I also compiled a sort of 'family tree' of the characters and then marked the relationships between then in red - the result is a veritable spiders web of connections spanning the decades. (Hey don't diss the hilux, that car is my baby). Added to this is an exploration of the persistence of time and the transience of human memory. Imogen Brown is a normal 16 year old girl. And boy, what an ordeal this has been. Epic in sweep, it intimately portrays a luminous but changing world and the ways memory – and myth – can be built and broken. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2013. This leaves much to the reader's imagination and draws you into the tale. This book starts as a nice, late 19th century society novel, very conventionally told and playing in the upper British class. One of the lovers heroically dies in war, and becomes a well-known poet. The only other Alan Hollinghurst book I've read is the beautiful but disturbing Booker Prize winner. It rescued me from lapsing into a boredom induced coma while sitting in a hilux in a field in the middle of the Cheshire countryside. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. Set across different time lines, it is occasionally difficult to keep up with the roll call of characters and the various relationships, but, like Jonathan Coe, Hollinghurst is good on the nature of time and how it shifts and warps our view of things, and how the past can never be fully recalled or captured with accuracy. Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist, and winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. The repetition of "he said/she said" dialogue tags are hard to ignore). ©2011 Alan Hollinghurst (P)2011 Random House More from the same Seven years later The Stranger’s Child made the Man Booker long list and then fell out of contention, which led to bitter complaints from those critics who believe that Hollinghurst is Britain’s greatest living writer. Perhaps my biggest issue with this novel is that I did enjoy it...when Forster wrote it nearly a century ago in "Maurice" and then when Waugh wrote it in "Brideshead". Please try again. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. To the Editors:. In The Stranger’s Child, the Jewishness of the press photographer Jerry Goldblatt (in the section of the book set in 1926) is deployed precisely to illustrate the prejudicial attitudes of Dudley Valance, who speaks to him “in a harsh tone” and repeats his name in a way that strikes Dudley’s wife Daphne (through whose eyes this chapter is seen) as pointedly unpleasant. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. I’d instead argue that “the stranger’s child” is the impact Cecil Valance left on each character’s life. Best of all, his male characters aren't spending most of the novel having sex with each other at the drop of a hat. Hollinghurst is fifty and he's still writing about boys and their capacity for stratospheric ejaculation. An Ottawa journalist, author and writer, I have contributed to what is now known as Daily Xtra since 1999. The characters, the time jumps, the poignancy of characters that were gone in the future sections and how memories of them became blurred and changed, and how ultimately they were forgotten, as we all will be. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Throughout the twentieth century people start to take an interest in the poet, and even a biography is being set up. I found myself doing a lot of skimming without really missing much of the story line. The two stars here rates my enjoyment level of this book rather than my valuation of the writing, which I'd give a four, and Hollinghurst's perceptive understandings of human foible and social identity. However, I recall well the attention to detail and elegance of prose associated with the author's style in the first book. This book rescued me. This is a novel of superb observation, of how the past is interpreted across generations. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. And I’m not enthusiastic enough to read the other 47% in the hopes of finding out. More From This Contributor. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2019. We suddenly encounter a cast of different characters and POVs, and it's not until several pages later we realize what that has to do with Daphne's, our main character's, story. ALAN HOLLINGHURST is the author of the novels The Stranger's Child, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell, and The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. I read large chunks more than once because the writing is breathtaking, but leisurely: I wanted to capture the craft and jot down many quotes (see the end of this for a long selection). Dorothy, honey, wait until you read "The Stranger's Child." Share. This was a cracking good read to start the new year with. While I was quick to deliver a three-star rating to this novel, I could consider dropping another star. Romantic life tale Read 3-4 years ago. (But I may, next up is the winner, “The Sense of a Ending.”) Hollinghurst has won the award before, but his latest effort is an incredible story of love, loyalty, and the art of poetry (and much, much more). Handsome, athletic, charismatic, he is unaware of his effect on others - especially on Evert Dax, the lonely son of a celebrated novelist who is destined to become a writer himself. In every phrase he finds the perfect word. However, with the second book it took considerably longer. Does this book contain inappropriate content? After the archetypal. Perhaps it's because as a man, I lack the finesse to grasp the subtle stabs at the human condition, but to me it's just boring. The Stranger’s Child is a comedy of manners, exuberantly funny, as well as a literary mystery, filled with elegant and erudite tips of the author’s hat to other writers—not just Tennyson, [Rupert] Brooke, but E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley and many more. In truth, the lyrical beauty of his flawless writing almost negates the need for a story. BUY NOW FROM. It is very clever in that many of the relationships are implied rather than explicit and some are not revealed until many years later. Unfortunately, despite having read 53% of this immensely overlong tome, I’m not at all sure if it’s about anything much at all. I'm not sure what to think of this book. Lives tangle and untangle in a literate, literary mystery at the heart of World War I … The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for everyone, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact. I perfectly understand the prize nominations and love of his work expressed widely on this site, but at the same time I was underwhelmed by the novel as a whole. Witty, nuanced and observant work from a great wrtier working at the height of his powers. The Stranger’s Child doesn’t deal with literal children per se, although of course generational difference is definitely one of its key themes. Rich with Hollinghurst's signature gifts - haunting sensuality, delicious wit and exquisite lyricism - The Stranger's Child is a tour de force: a masterly novel about the lingering power of desire, how the heart creates its own history, and how legends are made. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance and, as reputations rise and fall, the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story.Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Stranger’s Child is Hollinghurst’s masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes. Starts slow, gets more promising in the middle, but then disappointing. Please try again. But appearances are deceiving, because Hollinghurst has made a pretty ingenious piece of work with alternating time periods, different storytelling perspectives and several layers of meaning. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2018. Both families were in the British upper class, with the Vances a bit higher, having a … Now that Hollinghurst is in his mid 60s he appears to be writing for a wider audience. The overall message could easily have been conveyed in two thirds of the words. The rel. A relationship that was forecasted by the relation between the poet and his lover. This review may contain more information about the plot than you want to know. I normally start a review with a little blurb giving an idea of what the book’s about. The Stranger's Child, then, is a departure: while homosexuality and gay relationships are a strong theme throughout the book, it is a family saga spanning almost a hundred years - stretching from the eve of the First World War to the present day - and is the first Hollinghurst novel to feature major female characters. The Stranger's Child is a remarkable, unmissable achievement, written with the calm authority of an author who could turn his literary gifts to just about anything. Forbidden love. It even results in a new gay relationship. Snoresville. The sense of the ever-present collision between past and present is perhaps, the over-riding message to take from the story, along with the obsession we sometimes have to nail down events that are fleeting in nature. The Stranger's Child follows two British families, the Vances and the Sawles, from before WWI to the present. Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2012. The same friend who encouraged me to read Hollinghusrt's 'The Line of Beauty' also referred me to this latest effort 'The Stranger's Child'. Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! From the first dozen pages, even the first few sentences, I was drawn into a love affair with the writing of this book. Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2011. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Just in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2018 English literature aesthetic over this... 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