Comment

Oct 03, 2011
"Alan Hollinghurst’s characters like going to parties; or, if they don’t exactly like going, they can’t, for various reasons, stay away. Nick Guest, the main character in Hollinghurst’s previous novel, The Line of Beauty, was, as his name suggests, a wonderfully social being and the novel, which won the Man Booker Prize, offered a vivid portrait of the cultural and sexual mores of 1980s London. Now, seven years later, in The Stranger’s Child, Hollinghurst once again sends his characters to many parties. He is a dazzling writer, but never more so than when describing an extended scene with people coming and going, and having one too many gin and tonics." Margot Livesey Globe and Mail