- Mass Market Paperback
- Publisher: Picador Books; Reprint edition (2004)
- ASIN: B001D6FQ90
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just Beautiful!,
This review is from: The Line Of Beauty (Hardcover)
This novel is the winner of this year's Booker Prize over a book I loved and ardently supported, David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAS. Did it deserve to beat out Mitchell's opus? Arguably, yes. Where Mitchell's magnificent novel is raw, vibrant, explosive, exciting, poetic, and prophetic, THE LINE OF BEAUTY is refined, subtle, understated, touching, eloquent, and reflective.There are few authors who can move a book at such a torturedly slow pace and still manage a success. The key to "The Line of Beauty" lies in the detail....Hollinghurst unfolds his characters with enormous pathos, keeping their quotes brief and allowing his observations about them to become expanded. Their is a dryness to his writing that seems endemic of British authors but remaining in that style allows the flavor of his characters to come through with great shades of color. This is not a fast-paced read, the way McCrae's KATZENJAMMER is, or the way some of the more well-known bestsellers are. But it is a great novel and should be read for its wonderful writing and style.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazingly crafted novel that will become a true classic,
By
This review is from: The Line Of Beauty (Hardcover)
The prose is worked with precision that makes continuous, but subtle, self-reference to Henry James' art; the themes are interwoven and all-encompassing but approached with an impressionist skill that allows the canvas of Thatcher's England of the early 80s to be perfectly and acurately drawn but with unnoticeable workmanship; the hero, Nick, carries with him and brings to a phenomenal yet human apothéose the 20th century notion of protagonist that is neither hero nor anti-hero: he is what most people were in 80s Britain: too lost to apply values. Behind it all, a philosophical attempt, not just as theme but a true quest of the author, to define Beauty. An amazing amazing piece of literature, worth reading over and over and over again.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
all style, no substance...,
This review is from: The Line Of Beauty (Paperback)
I just finished this book and I am still wondering what it's about. The author was clearly trying to emulate (and update) Evelyn Waugh, and this is where he clearly missed the mark. Buried between the author's long-winded passages of the otherwise boring lives of the British moneyed class (which by the 80's was well into decline) is an attempt to draw out a thin plot where nothing really happens to characters you do not really care about.If you want an engaging read with both style and substance, dust off "Brideshead Revisited", "Vile Bodies", or "Scoop" instead.
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