The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst · b. 1954 · England
Why it matters
Nick Guest, gay, beautiful, and besotted with style, lodges with a Tory MP's family through Thatcherism's champagne years as AIDS gathers offstage. The 2004 Booker winner: the political novel written in perfect Jamesian sentences.
At a glance
psychological novelpolitical novel
Difficulty 5/10slow pace501 pagesLong, poised Jamesian sentences and irony that never announces itself.
Deep dive
Why the line Nick finds most beautiful isn't a person's body but a curve in a Hogarth drawing — and what that says about everything he mistakes for love.
