Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.1 / 5.0

Unique, hybrid: high tone literature with sizzling erotics:

I recently re-read this book. It is a unique amalgam of very serious, high tone fiction and highly graphic, unadulterated scenes involving the kind of sexuality that would not make it into books that school systems adopt for even advanced high school courses. The narrator is rather selfish, aristocratic, but also appealing, in that, he makes no excuses for his human failings. At times, the depiction of gay haunts and habits is highly satirical, for example, the repeated references to "Trouble for Men," a... more info

One of the most intelligent gay novels in years:

Alan Hollinghurst may be the most intelligent gay English-language novelist writing today, with the possible exceptions of Edmund White and Gore Vidal, but Hollinghurst is neither so precious as White nor so nutty as Vidal. THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY was his first effort, and remains his best. It marvelously captures the life enjoyed by a wealthy, handsome, leisured, and predatory London aristocrat, William Beckwith, in the early Eighties, and the way his life changes when he meets Chalres Beckwith, a titled... more info

Old and young:

Will Beckwith is a young Brit of privilege who leads a life of leisure and sexual escapades, whether he has a boyfriend or not. He befriends the elderly Lord Nantwich who pressures him to co-write his memoirs, but the young man has many hesitations, and as he reads Nantwich's journals, he finds himself equally fascinated and alarmed at the connections he sees with his own life. In his youth, Nantwich was much like Will and he met a bevy of notable queers, including E. M. Forster and Ronald Firbank. "The... more info

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