Customer Reviews

The Stranger's Child

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I just gave up last night!! I have read almost half the novel and was totally bored!!! I honestly don't know why this novel is being given such a literary spoltlight. Other than the gay strand running throughout, I felt it was like reading a pale imitation of E.M. Forester without the strong narrative arc! Yes, the writing style is lovely but it left me cold. I would rather watch PBS Masterpiece theatre for a visual depiction of Edwardian life rather than wading through pages and pages of irrelevant descriptions - is this a portent of the post-modern style "simply words for words sake"?? Perhaps, Hollinghurst should just write poetry. As a reader, I have certain expectations when reading a novel and this novel certainly did not satisfy any of them. I wonder who his editoral advisor is??? If you decide to read this novel, be prepared to become very frustrated and bored. It is not often that I decide not to finish reading a higbly recommened novel! I think E.M. Forester's "Maurice" is a much stronger novel that deals with homo-erotic attraction and that was written a century before!!!

Alan Hollinghurst's fifth and latest novel, The Stranger's Child, is a dazzling addition to his already impressive contribution to contemporary British fiction. His last work, the Man Booker Prize winning The Line of Beauty, was chiefly set in London in the Thatcher era, and provided readers with an incisive image of what life was life at that particular time and place for a group of intriguing characters spanning a wide range of social categories.

The same thing could be said about this latest novel, though the time frame is much broader, spanning nearly a century, from 1913 to 2008.

The story begins when two Cambridge undergrads, Cecil Valence, a charismatic aristocrat already gaining fame for his lyric poetry, and George Sawle, whose hero-worship of his more illustrious friend goes well beyond the mere platonic, spend a week-end at "Two Acres," the suburban home of the Sawles family. Also present is Daphne, George's sixteen-year-old sister, who falls for Cecil's seductive charm quite as much as her brother, and who, like her brother, sees her interest reciprocated in ways both esthetic and carnal. An elegiac poem entitled "Two Acres," which the versatile Cecil composes during his visit, later becomes a milestone in English literature, though there will always be some doubt as to which of the Sawle siblings was the chief inspiration. Doubt and ambiguity play as important a part in this novel as do plot and character.

The book is divided into sections, five in all, each set in a different era. In the second, which takes place over a decade later, we see what happens when Daphne and George, now both with spouses, move into different social spheres, while still carrying the memories of their momentous association with the celebrated and now-deceased Cecil. These memories become both a burden and a form of glory with the passing years, and the ways in which memories become magnified, faded or distorted over time is one of the themes of this vast but carefully constructed novel. (In Search of Lost Time could easily have served as the title of this work if Proust hadn't used it first. The actual title, The Stranger's Child, is a quote from Tennyson, yet another author who sought to evoke what was lost to the past through his words.)

As the years go by, new characters are added to the narrative, while others pass away. Those who were main characters in an earlier section become minor ones later on, while lesser figures take on a far greater importance than we could have at first supposed. While the focus of the reader's interest shifts, as does the course of the narrative, one never feels the author has lost control or that the action is drifting. What often seem like loose ends throughout much of the book are tied up by the conclusion, in the satisfying way that is a particular pleasure of classic English fiction.

With his gift for piquant dialogue and an uncanny ability to juxtapose words in unforeseen yet gratifying ways, Hollinghurst is not only a superior storyteller but also a remarkable stylist.

The Stranger's Child is the work of gifted artist, writing at the top of his form.