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The Swimming-Pool Library
by Alan Hollinghurst
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$14.95 |
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$11.21 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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$3.74 (25%) |
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Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN13: 9780679722564
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Easily one of [1988's] most important debuts...A buoyant, smart, irrepressibly sexy book...that has the heft and resonance of a classic modernist novel, the sprawl and surprise of an intimate memoir." -- Village Voice Literary SupplementA literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. "Impeccably composed and meticulously particular in its observation of everything" (Harpers & Queen), it focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, an old Africa hand, searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions. "The swimming-pool library beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions. It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction's solid grace." -- The New York Times Book Review "Absorbing and delightful...some of the brightest, smartest writing to come along in a long time." -- Houston Post
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| Strangely disturbing and comforting at the same time. |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I really liked the evolution of this book. The author takes his time developing the main characters, Will and Charles, although Charles' development is in the form of journals written throughout his life and given to Will to read. The book got better as it progressed and by the end it became very interesting. The lives of Will and Charles are linked in a way that is quite original and not very obvious (I didn't see it coming). One of the themes of the book deals with casual promiscuity in a gay culture of the past, which can at times be disturbing. However, by the end of the book another subtle theme reveals itself, and that is that everyone has a story, and everyone's story is interesting even if it is not told or written down in a journal. I don't know, I guess I just really liked how all the stories were somehow linked together in this book. I recommend it and I'll read some more from this author.
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| disappointing |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I bought this book on the strength of other reader reviews. I saw the wide gap of criticism, but I think that usually a clash of opinion makes for a good read. I was wrong.
Overall, I liked the book (although the Victorio-Edwardian style of the diary entries got to be tough slogging sometimes). I guess my main complaint is the ending. I have no problem with an unsympathetic protagonist, but I would like to feel at the end of the book that it was worth my time reading it. The author develops several plot threads over the course of the book and then drops them in the last couple of chapters, as if the main character just got terribly bored, grabbed his gym bag, and went for a swim.
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| the swimming pool library |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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An enchanting story of homosexuality, but written in a style not east-to-read. Sometimes it gets boring, sometimes it takes your breath. It explores in detail modern homosexual life and it provides a very challenging topic for further researches.
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| Good Read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I'm enjoying reading this book again and again. I find that strange.
I am a retired Foreign Service officer who spent most of his adult life processing visa applications in overseas countries. Part of this book is about being an overseas diplomat (from England, though, not the USA) and that appealed to me.
But I bought the book completely for its title: "The Swimming Pool Library." I swam in college, way back in the 1960s, and almost made it to the Olympic Trials. And I like books, so the title, "Swimming Pool Library" appealed to me. I'm retired and I was looking for books to fill my library and fill my time.
I didn't know it would be about the homosexual lifestyle, and indeed as a straight man with grown children and grandchildren, I didn't have any appeal for that subject.
But the book has grabbed a hold of me and I've read it three and a half times in the past two months. I guess retirement does something to the human mind...At any rate, it's good writing and the main character gets into some interesting predicaments and I liked the other parts of the book - the diaries from being a British diplomat in Africa - and the gay thing just has me feeling and thinking things I never felt or thought about before, at least not consciously that I know of.
My wife keeps looking at me reading this on the porch but I don't care; if she wants to pick it up and read it herself maybe it would open up some dialog that we should have had decades ago.
I love my wife and my children and grandchildren, and I love this book.
Buy it. You'll be presently surprised.
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| Overrated and overwritten |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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The plot is threadbare, the characters are two-dimensional, and the prose is so overwritten that it eclipses the book's tenuous literary merits.
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