Book Review: 'The Line of Beauty' (2004) (Alan Hollinghurst)

In perhaps what might be the boldest attempt in contemporary English fiction, Alan Hollinghurst announces his arrival on THE literary scene with a stamp of majestic authority through his explicitly gay themed and critically acclaimed novel “The Line of Beauty”. No wonder then that it was the first novel with an overt homosexual motif to have won the Booker Prize in its 36-year history in 2004, fully deserving of the adulation it received the world over. Far too much praise has been lavished in generous dose on the ‘achingly beautiful’ style of Hollinghurst’s work that is replete with passages of ‘dream-like’ beauty.

Hollinghurst ever so masterfully creates an endless landscape of rich imagery for the reader to glide through in reverie. Any connoisseur of beauty would find it hard to suppress that smile and nod of approval, as line after line of sheer poetic charm unfolds in the prose written with such unbelievable eloquence.

The novel stands out for the delicately hilarious undertone in its narrative all through, which among many others is a subtly satirical jibe at the social and political structure of London during the Thatcher years in the early 80s. The notorious and ungainly infatuation of politicians of those times with The Great Lady is shrewdly interlaced in the story as well.

Extending over a period of five years, the novel chronicles the journey of self-discovery of Nick Guest, a young Oxford graduate pursuing Ph. D on the element of style in the works of his idol Henry James. He is lodged at the palatial residence of his Oxford classmate Toby, whose ambitious father Gerald Fedden is the newly elected Conservative MP in the Thatcher Government. Keeping company for the youngest Fedden, Catherine, a troubled rebel with unpredictable mood swings, he soon becomes the unofficial custodian of the family.

Nick is enthralled by all things rich and beautiful of the high class society to which he gets access by virtue of being in the company of Feddens. Quite the aesthetic observer, he tries to take in the intoxicating beauty as he sees in the things around him – music, paintings, art, furniture, and above all male anatomy, and in a way makes it a rationale for the survival of his ‘self’.

He gains the first taste of romance from an affair with a black council worker, which ends abruptly, setting him on to a different pedestal, enabling him to let go of his continence. An explosive and clandestine relationship that follows with a beautiful Lebanese millionaire playboy leads him into the perilously adventurous world of cocaine, insatiable lust and scandals. As the denouement unfolds, there is a sudden reversal of fortune what with the specter of AIDS looming around and an ironic twist of fate isolating him from the Feddens.

The intensely graphic portrayals of the sexual encounters of the protagonist, sure to raise an eyebrow, are candid depictions of the gradually blooming confidence Nick gains in exploring his sexuality. But this novel is not to be seen as only gay fiction. The story is not the focal point so much as the way it is narrated without any room for the mundane. The world as seen through the eyes of the homosexual protagonist is indeed poignantly thought provoking and for once there is no stereotypical stereotyping!

The novel takes its name from the 18^th century artiste William Hogarth’s espousal of the 'S' line (also called the Ogee curve), in his treatise on ‘Analysis of Beauty’, a ‘line’ of beauty supposably innate in all thriving works of visual art. The line curves from one extreme to another and reverses itself, creating tension and beauty simultaneously. That in short, is the pandect of Nick’s life, as seen in the context of social setting of the affectations of the elite London. Unwittingly, the author ends up creating similar effects of tension and beauty in readers’ minds as well!! In a way, the title is even suggestive of the likewise reception of the novel!

The characterization of Nick is swathed in hues of differing complexities and that is the most striking feature of the novel, rendering the readers ambivalent. His unwavering belief that he owns all things beautiful in the world by right of taste and longing is too comely for the reader to condone his at-times foolhardy acts of silent despair. He is circumspect, yet comes undone with the intermittent teetering on the outward edge of disarray in an attempt to come to terms with his unrequited love. Nick is aware of the ominous feel his life takes on in course of his ascension into the upper echelons of the society. But, he is reluctant to part with the patina of invincibility, courtesy the aesthete in him, as he discovers a protective conformity while spanning off into worlds of his own making in light of the opacity of those around him.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever… For aesthetes, The Line of Beauty is as joyous as it gets!! What would be interesting to see is how that invariably philistine population amidst us, blinded by their obnoxious and inexplicably bigoted world-view, would respond to the staunch advocacy of this book through this review.