The Stranger's Child Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Stranger's Child Book

The omission of The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst from the Mann Booker Prize shortlist caused some outrage among the critics and opened up a floodgate of professional and amateur reviews whose opinions of the novel varied from "a masterpiece" to "dull" so it was some time before I chose to read this 560 page long novel and what a fortunate choice that turned out to be. Set in that benign time immediately before the first world war, the protagonist is the enigmatic young poet Cecil Valance who is in a homosexual relationship with George Sawle, the son of a respectable very English family. Written in five episodes, the effects of that relationship on the lives and loves of two families over the following decades are revealed. The novel is a subtle and extremely clever acknowledgement of the passing of time and the changes in attitudes, sensibilities and consciences with an underlying but strong theme of homosexuality and gay love. The leaps through time are at first frustrating, the thread of continuity seems to disappear but that is a reflection of life as it progresses, new characters unrelated to the previous chunk of our lives emerge and others from the past fade in our memories and lose their importance and influence. The wit is sharp, the storytelling remarkable, characters are strong, although not always likeable. There are exquisite little cameos of pre war aristocratic life with all its nuances and protocol, the finest detail and breathtaking descriptions, but above all there is the elegance and beauty of the prose, which in itself makes this a stunning novel. The Stranger's Child is Hollinghurst's fifth novel and is highly recommended.Read More

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  • Play

    In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at 'Two Acres' the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles but it is on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation an evocation of an England about to change for ever. Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties. In a sequence of widely separated episodes we follow the two families through startling changes in fortune and circumstance. At the centre of this often richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation runs the story of Daphne from innocent girlhood to wary old age. Around her Hollinghurst draws an absorbing picture of an England constantly in flux.As in "The Line of Beauty" his impeccably nuanced exploration of changing taste class and social etiquette is conveyed in deliciously witty and observant prose. Exposing our secret longings to the shocks and surprises of time "The Stranger's Child" is an enthralling novel from one of the finest writers in the English language.

  • TheBookPeople

    Young poet Cecil Valance stays at Two Acres, the home of his close friend George Sawle, in the summer of 1913. Cecil writes a poem and names it after this home and it is this poem which will become a touchstone for a generation. Ambiguously addressed to either George or his younger sister Daphne, the poem takes on a life of its own and this novel examines the changing reputation of Valance and his poetry in the years that followed. The Stranger's Child is an enthralling novel from Alan Hollinghurst that was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

  • Blackwell

    Alan Hollinghurst's first novel since The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at 'Two Acres', the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle.

  • 0330483242
  • 9780330483247
  • Alan Hollinghurst
  • 1 July 2011
  • Picador
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 576
  • First Edition
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