‘Alan Hollinghurst is one of our best living writers – the LGBTQ+ community has much to thank him for’
Alan Hollinghurst and the cover of his new novel Our Evenings (Images: Robert Taylor/Picador)
Long before Charli XCX was bumpin’ from party to party, Nick Guest – the lead character in The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – was having something of a Brat Summer.
The novel, published in 2004, follows its attractive protagonist as he buggers his uni friends in bathrooms, takes lines off their thighs (there are plural meanings of the “line” referenced in the novel’s title), flirts with paparazzi and gets pummelled behind MPs’ sheds. It was this unapologetic and raucously gay book that thrust Hollinghurst into a spotlight aged 50. “Gay sex wins Booker”, one tabloid yelled, as Alan himself was interviewed about it on the news – it was a cause célèbre!
The Line of Beauty was
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