欧宝娱乐

I'd been meaning to look into Hollinghurst for years, ever since I read a rave review of The Swimming Pool Library ... by a writer whose opinion I respected but whom I can't remember now. Martin Amis, maybe? I want to say John Updike, but given the controversy over his New Yorker review of Hollinghurst's later The Spell , I'm not sure I could handle the irony.

In any case, I always look for Swimming Pool Library in book stores, but they never seem to carry it. So finally I got this instead, to help assuage my sudden lust--inspired by Birdsong , of all books--for contemporary British novels with class concerns. (Which is... kind of every British novel ever, isn't it?)

And I'm so glad I did. I'm still processing my opinion on the novel of a whole, but I know two things:

(1) The majority of reviews praise this book for its social satire, but what I found most admirable was its understanding, at once keenly mocking and deeply humane, of the simple absurdity of being a person, in relationships with other people. In his self-consciousness, his self-pity, and his touching self-awareness, Nick was one of the most sympathetic characters I've encountered in a long time.

(2) The final paragraph may take the prize for most beautiful passage of prose I've read in 2007 (thus far). I kept stopping halfway through--unwilling to reach its conclusion too soon--and going back, starting it over. I probably read it five times before I got all the way through and finally allowed the book to end for me.