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[2][3][4], "The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst – review", "The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst: review", "What the press thinks of Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child", "Walter Scott historical fiction shortlist announced", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Stranger%27s_Child&oldid=986654259, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 November 2020, at 05:27. Now that Hollinghurst is in his mid 60s he appears to be writing for a wider audience. ‘Wh In particular The Stranger's Child looks at the gradual evolution of gay culture in Britain and the effects of memory and ageing on individuals and society (for instance literary reputation, architecture and romantic relationships). In fact, Brooke is … The Keeper of Lost Things: the perfect uplifting read for 2020 - winner of the Rich... Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes and Stories, The Overstory: Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 'Hollinghurst's follow-up to The Line of Beauty, his 2004 Man Booker-Prize winner, is still several months away, but advance word suggests another classic. I read the book several times and enjoyed it better each time. By 1980, Paul, now no longer with Peter, is working on a definitive biography of Cecil, hoping to explore his sexuality. Try again. He faces competition from Nigel Dupont, who is writing a book on Cecil's poetry at the same time. He is also a friend of Corinna Keeping, Daphne's eldest child, who also teaches at the school. Chomsky – a graphic guide £ 7.99. . That's why I give it a three - in terms of the weak, rambling plot, it really ought to be 2. Victorianism, with its sentiment, clutter, and decorum, has special importance in The Stranger’s Child, which is committed to a kind of salvage, a recuperation of modes of feeling, chiefly the romantic friendships of upper-class men, that have only survived as traces in the margins and the marginalia of the English tradition. George discusses Sebby's book and intimates that Cecil was gay, suggesting that with the imminent passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 this information will become more public. . This leaves much to the reader's imagination and draws you into the tale. 'The Stranger s Child is a treasure: few contemporary novels show equal care at the level of structure and line. He is seated beside Daphne's granddaughter, Jennifer Ralph, descended from her marriage to Revel Ralph. Something went wrong. . . . Much of The Stranger's Child concerns attempts to get at the truth of Cecil Valance. It is very clever in that many of the relationships are implied rather than explicit and some are not revealed until many years later. A worthy but at times stodgy read from Hollinghurst, but much, much better than The Line of Beauty. The Stranger's Child is a long and populous novel and, as T S Eliot wrote of an anthology of poems from that period, Rupert Brooke is not absent. After a drunken dinner, Eva Riley, the fashionable designer engaged by Dudley to modernize the Dorley Court interiors, makes a pass at Daphne. Cecil makes a deep impression on the Sawle family, not least on George's 16-year-old younger sister Daphne, who develops a crush on him. Sorry, there was a problem saving your cookie preferences. The sense of the ever-present collision between past and present is perhaps, the over-riding message to take from the story, along with the obsession we sometimes have to nail down events that are fleeting in nature. Nicola Shulman in the Evening Standard said: "This subject - of memory and memorial, and the fates of the keepers of the flame - has been done before, and well, as the author acknowledges. Witty, nuanced and observant work from a great wrtier working at the height of his powers. The Stranger's Child was generally received positively by critics, with Hari Kunzru in The Guardian calling it "this affecting, erudite novel" and Keith Miller in The Daily Telegraph describing it as "sleek, seductive and a little sly". Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 July 2018. The Stranger’s Child itself is the culmination of not only Hollinghurst’s ambition but that secret literary tradition to which it is addressed." Daphne has married Cecil's younger brother, Dudley, and is now Lady Valance. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. I would compare the novel to Middlemarch . Powerful, absorbing and richly comic, The Stranger s Child is a masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes over a century of change. Daphne believes that the poem contains secret references to her kiss with Cecil and is surprised when George is churlish in his reaction to it. . In The Stranger’s Child, the Jewishness of the press photographer Jerry Goldblatt (in the section of the book set in 1926) is deployed precisely to illustrate the prejudicial attitudes of Dudley Valance, who speaks to him “in a harsh tone” and repeats his name in a way that strikes Dudley’s wife Daphne (through whose eyes this chapter is seen) as pointedly unpleasant. Divided into five sections, Alan Hollinghurst’s narrative each time focuses on a different generation. In 1967, Paul Bryant, a young man in his 20s, has just started work at a bank. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2013. The Stranger’s Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. 9. Somebody who writes with as much beauty as anyone can - and who offers such a fine command of language and observation. —Geoff Dyer, New York Magazine "Charming. . And I’m not enthusiastic enough to read the other 47% in the hopes of finding out. edition (24 May 2012), Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2020. On the following morning she discovers that the autograph book she has asked Cecil to sign contains a freshly written five-page poem, which he has entitled 'Two Acres'. find books. Because of their loose connections to the Keeping family both men are invited to Daphne's 70th birthday party where they meet George Sawle and they talk about Cecil Valance. . Buy this product and stream 90 days of Amazon Music Unlimited for free. Filled with intimacies and confusions, the weekend will link the families for ever, having the most lasting impact on George s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne. The Mirror and the Light: The Sunday Times Bestseller from the two-time winner of t... Until the Fall of '19: the stunning sequel to That Summer of '74, Eager For More: A brother's best friend gay romance (EagerBoyz), Changing Trains: One boy's journey of discovery across 1980s Europe, The Foxxxy Gentlemen's Club: Christian (Foxxxy Book 1). The Stranger’s Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. . Read 22 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Approved third parties also use these tools in connection with our display of ads. Stranger Child proved quite a shock, so much so that it was hard for me to believe that this flowed from the same pen as: So it Begins, The Sixth Window and Right Behind you. The majority of the correspondence is from Hubert Sawle, George and Daphne's older brother, whom Hewitt has tried, unsuccessfully, to woo in the years before Hubert's death in WWI. Sex, war, class, literature, Englishness little is untouched as it sweeps through the 20th century. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2018. The Stranger's Child was Sunday Times Novel of the Year in 2011. What are some of its funniest moments and most amusing observations? If it's not, we'll eat your copy.' Paul is a closeted gay man and at work he encounters Peter Rowe, to whom he is immediately attracted and whom he recognizes as also being gay. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "And year by year the landscape grow / Familiar to the stranger's child." Alan Hollinghurst is the author of four previous novels. This is a wonderful story, the best of Hollinghurst's books in my view. . Do we as readers of the novel know Cecil more accurately than George, Daphne, Dudley - even Sebastian Stokes? I normally start a review with a little blurb giving an idea of what the book’s about. Anarchism is Movement £ 7.50. In the second of its five parts, “The Stranger’s Child” moves forward to 1926. The Swimming-Pool Library (Vintage Classics), Swimming in the Dark: ‘One of the most astonishing contemporary gay novels we have ever read … A masterpiece’ – Attitude, The Swimming Pool Library by Hollinghurst, Alan (1998) Paperback. What does the novel as a whole say about our ability to truly know another person? Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK, Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost, Dispatch to this address when you check out, Previous page of related Sponsored Products, Picador; Main Market Ed. On their first date at Corley Court Peter finds Paul inexperienced and shy but decides to keep him as a potential boyfriend. Following the lives of two families from the eve of WW1 to the close of the 20th century, it promises to be hugely ambitious, deeply affecting and beautifully written. If you do not want to accept all cookies or would like to learn more about how we use cookies, click "Customise cookies". The Stranger’s Child doesn’t trouble itself to map out these ongoing lives in much detail. In one sense, The Stranger's Child is about trying to capture the past, with the story of a poet and his relationships woven into the different strands of the book. ALAN HOLLINGHURST is the author of the novels The Stranger's Child, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell, and The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Another five letters appear to be from Cecil Valance to Hewitt and hint at a sexual affair between the two of them. Please try your request again later. It is also elegiac about England where the present allows freedoms undreamed of in the past and yet beauty is destroyed at the same time. He also muses on the idea of writing an updated biography of Cecil Valance, although by now he is considered a minor poet and has been eclipsed in reputation by his younger brother Dudley. They are there to discuss the life and legacy of Cecil – killed during World War I – and to assist a family friend, Sebastian "Sebby" Stokes, who is planning to write an 'authorized' memoir of the, by now, famous soldier-poet. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. In one sense, The Stranger's Child is about trying to capture the past, with the story of a poet and his relationships woven into the different strands of the book. What better to read over the Jubilee' --The Times Paul reaches out to Dudley, George, and Daphne in an attempt to find out more information for his book. The poem goes on to become famous and the novel follows the changing reputation of Valance and his poetry in the following decades. A study on fame and the passing of time, it is as compulsive as anything [Hollinghurst has] written. At a memorial service for Peter Rowe, who has died at the age of 62, antiquarian Rob Salter meets several of Peter's friends including his civil partner and Paul Bryant, now a semi-famous biographer. The Stranger's Child – the title comes from Tennyson's In Memoriam – is Hollinghurst's fifth novel, and his first since The Line Of Beauty won the Booker prize in 2004. In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle… The Stranger's Child is the fifth novel by Alan Hollinghurst, first published in June 2011. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Stranger’s Child moves from the beginning of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty first. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Unbeknownst to the Sawles, Cecil and George are gay and the two of them spend much of their time together engaging in amorous trysts. Set across different time lines, it is occasionally difficult to keep up with the roll call of characters and the various relationships, but, like Jonathan Coe, Hollinghurst is good on the nature of time and how it shifts and warps our view of things, and how the past can never be fully recalled or captured with accuracy. In 1913, he visits a Cambridge friend, George Sawle, at the latter's home in Stanmore, Middlesex. In 1913, aristocrat and poet Cecil Valance visits the … The book tells the story of a minor poet, Cecil Valance, who is killed in the First World War. Paul at last secures an interview with Daphne, but she too is unforthcoming and is deliberately evasive about Cecil. Add to basket. The following morning after many of the guests leave, Daphne's younger son Wilfred discovers that Clara Kalbeck, Freda Sawle's elderly German companion, has died in a fall. In 1913, he visits a Cambridge friend, George Sawle, at the latter's home in Stanmore, Middlesex. The overall message could easily have been conveyed in two thirds of the words. Breaking Free £ 8.00. Add to basket. We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, to provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads, including interest-based ads. Mrs Jacobs is Daphne Sawle, now on her third marriage and 69 years old. Imogen Brown is a normal 16 year old girl. universally acclaimed as the best novel of the year Philip Hensher. While there Valance writes a poem entitled "Two Acres", about the Sawles' house and addressed, ambiguously, either to George himself or to George's younger sister, Daphne. The Stranger's Child is a remarkable, unmissable achievement, written with the calm authority of an author who could turn his literary gifts to just about anything. I made it to the end with a lot of page skimming. While there Valance writes a poem entitled "Two Acres", about the Sawles' house and addressed, ambiguously, either to George himself or to George's younger sister, Daphne. . . Unfortunately, despite having read 53% of this immensely overlong tome, I’m not at all sure if it’s about anything much at all. Powerful, absorbing and richly comic, The Stranger s Child is a masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes over a century of change. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times said: "Masterly in its narrative sweep, richly textured prose and imaginative flair and depth, this novel about an increasingly threadbare literary reputation enormously enhances Hollinghurst's own. The Stranger's Child is the fifth novel by Alan Hollinghurst, first published in June 2011. “The Stranger’s Child,” Alan Hollinghurst’s fifth novel, opens on a scene in Harrow and Wealdstone, a suburb north of London chosen by the author … Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize,The Stranger's Childis Hollinghurst's masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes. E-mail after purchase. I also compiled a sort of 'family tree' of the characters and then marked the relationships between then in red - the result is a veritable spiders web of connections spanning the decades. By now the surviving Sawles and Valances are elderly and unwilling to talk. In what ways does it illustrate the limits of our knowing? This is little more than a short story endlessly stretched out, without any of the surprises and twists that characterise the other novels. Hollinghurst ’ s narrative each time, home he encounters the matriarch of the year in 2011 email! 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