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The Swimming-Pool Library
The SwimmingPool Library
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
A literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. "Impeccably composed and meticulously particular in its observatio...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780099268130
ISBN-10: 0099268132
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 304
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 4

3.3 stars, based on 4 ratings
Publisher: Vintage
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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reviewed The Swimming-Pool Library on + 289 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1

Often one is disappointed when reading an author's earlier works. Not so with Alan Hollinghurst, best known for the Man Booker Prize winner The Line of Beauty in 2004.

In his debut novel The Swimming-Pool Library Hollinghurst shows mastery of elegant descriptive language in a story set about gay life in England before AIDS hit. William Beckwith, a pretty, young aristocrat leading a lesiured life of promiscuity, saves the life of an elderly peer named Charles Nantwich in a public lavatory, leading to a friendship wherein Charles persuades William to write his memoir. That device allows Holllinghust to alternate between two generations of the gay experience -- Will's semi-open decadence contrasted with Charles' more closeted but no less rich life, some of which was spent in Political Service in Africa, chronicled in detailed journal entries.

Literary and erotic at the same time, Hollinghurst builds a slow burning sexual tension throughout without much of a plot until the last few chapters. There one is left wondering how a novel driven mostly by character and beautiful language can seem anti-climatic. Locker rooms, showers, promiscious gay sex might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if it doesn't turn you off then you might want to take a dip in The Swimming-Pool Library.

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reviewed The Swimming-Pool Library on + 46 more book reviews
a little slice of the gay life in london, circa the 80's... not that i was there/am that old, but it seems to have had its moments


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