Books › The Line of Beauty
Booker Prize 2004
The Line of Beauty
First published 2004 · 670 pages
A glittering, devastating plunge into the intoxicating excess and quiet tragedies of 1980s London high society.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like attending a dazzling, champagne-soaked party where you slowly realize the house is on fire. It unfolds at a leisurely, observant pace, inviting you to luxuriate in its exquisitely crafted sentences and the opulent, seductive world of 1980s conservative London. The narrative voice is wry and sophisticated, capturing the subtle cruelties of class and privilege with Jamesian precision. Yet beneath the glittering surface of high society, art, and erotic discovery lies a profound, gathering melancholy. The mood shifts imperceptibly from intoxicating excess to a doomed, elegiac sadness as the shadow of the AIDS crisis encroaches. It is a masterpiece for readers who crave lush, immersive social satires that ultimately break your heart.
- Mood
- glittering
- opulent
- melancholic
- seductive
- doomed
- Tone
- wry
- elegiac
- satirical
- sophisticated
- observant
- Pace
- leisurely
- Themes
- the pursuit of aesthetics · class and privilege · the illusion of belonging · political hypocrisy · the shadow of the AIDS crisis
- The writing
- Exquisitely crafted and lush, with a Jamesian precision that captures every sensory detail and subtle social cruelty.
- The arc
- Begins with the intoxicating thrill of entering a glamorous, privileged world and slowly descends into a devastating, isolating awakening.
- Who it's for
- Readers who savor sharp social critiques wrapped in gorgeous, languid prose and deeply observant character studies.
Content notes
- homophobia
- the AIDS epidemic
- drug use
- sexual content
- racism
About the book
It is the summer of 1983, and twenty-year-old Nick Guest has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby--whom Nick had idolized at Oxford--and Catherine, highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions, who becomes both a friend to Nick and his uneasy responsibility.
As the boom years of the mid-eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in matters of politics and money, becomes caught up in the Feddens' world--its grand parties, its surprising alliances, its parade of monsters both comic and menacing. In an era of endless possibility, he finds himself able to pursue his own private obsession with beauty--a prize as compelling to him as power and riches to his friends. An affair with a young black clerk gives him his first experience of romance, but it is a later affair with a beautiful millionaire that will change his life drastically and bring into question the larger fantasies of a ruthless decade.
Framed by the two general elections that returned Margaret Thatcher to power, The Line of Beauty unfurls through four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly funny, this is a major work by one of our finest writers.
Description from Open Library.
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