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The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst
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In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at 'Two Acres', the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but it is on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation, an evocation of an England about to change for ever. Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century, and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties. In a sequence of widely separated episodes we follow the two families through startling changes in fortune and circumstance. At the centre of this often richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation runs the story of Daphne, from innocent girlhood to wary old age.
Around her Hollinghurst draws an absorbing picture of an England constantly in flux. As in The Line of Beauty, his impeccably nuanced exploration of changing taste, class and social etiquette is conveyed in deliciously witty and observant prose. Exposing our secret longings to the shocks and surprises of time, The Stranger's Child is an enthralling novel from one of the finest writers in the English language.
- Sales Rank: #149664 in Audible
- Published on: 2011-07-08
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 1196 minutes
Most helpful customer reviews
103 of 111 people found the following review helpful.
My favourite sprawling British novel this year
By Kiwireads
This beautifully written novel is a family saga, but so much more. It starts in 1913 with 16 year old Daphne Sawle lying in a hammock excitedly waiting for her brother George and his friend Cecil to come home for a long weekend. Home is "Two Acres" near London, where Daphne lives with her widowed mother Freda, her older brother Hubert, and George (when he's not at Cambridge). The book spans almost a century and we get to track the family members and their relations to one another in detail. There is also lots in here about how attitudes to World War 1 have changed, the Bloomsbury group and the war poets, how family myths get built up, and most of all, and not surprisingly because it's Alan Hollinghurst, how being gay in England has changed.
The Sawles are comfortably off, but not rich. They're acutely aware that Cecil comes from a much posher family, the Valances, and spend a fair bit of the weekend worrying about diong things right. For example, Jonah, one of their general house servants, is assigned to be Cecil's valet for the weekend, and has no clue what to do but pretends he does. George is infatuated with Cecil, whose strong personality comes through the whole novel. George worries about his mother and sister letting slip just how much detail he's told them about Cecil and his family. Lots happens during the weekend. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers!) It felt like a rewritten version of Brideshead Revisited near the start, only backwards - the rich boy comes into the poorer family home.
There are 5 or 6 parts to the book, and 15-20 years between parts. Figuring out what was going on at the start of every new part was great fun. I don't think it's giving much away to say that by the end of the book Cecil, George, Daphne, Hubert and the rest of the family have all died, and we're left with the myths surrounding their lives and the impact they have had on several generation.
I loved this book and really hope it wins the Booker this year. Comparing it to other Booker winners that I've read, it's much better than The Finkler Question, not as good as Wolf Hall or The Remains of the Day but I am still happy giving it 5 stars.
49 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
WORTH THE LONG WAIT
By Alan Dorfman
I have a mixed history with Alan Hollinghurst's previous novels. His first book, "The Swimming Pool Library," is quite simply my favorite novel. At the other end of the spectrum, his most recent book, "The Line Of Beauty," I found to be a crushing disappointment. I apparently was in the minority opinion on that inasmuch as the novel won the Man Booker Award. The other novels fall somewhere in between.
"The Stranger's Child" is an example of a brilliant writer working at the top of his form, a multi-generational saga beginning before the first World War and ending in the late 1960s. I say "ending" advisedly inasmuch as part of the success of the novel is that the reader is left with the understanding that the story specifically, and life in general goes on beyond the final page.
A writer of stunningly descriptive prose, Mr. Hollinghurst has created a nearly overabundance of three-dimensional characters, the importance to the narrative of which is not always necessarily apparent. Real people brilliantly brought to life in both broad strokes and the tiniest details. All in service of a semi-linear story, the plot of which is less important than the concepts the writer wants to convey.
If you want a description of the plot you can look elsewhere in this listing. Among other things, "The Stranger's Child" is about the physical and emotional evolution of England as a country and as a people from the Victorian age to the pre-AIDS present. It is about changing nature of families and the secrets they contain. It is about emergence of homosexuality from the silent, glass closet into the light of a more enlightened age where same-sex love is now allowed to speak its name.
Ultimately "The Stranger's Child" is about memoir, biography and, by extension, reality itself. It's about how we see the past through the subjective eyes of people we don't know, who selectively choose details to disclose, often for selfish reasons. People who seldom "know" the whole story and shape their discussion of their role in the bigger picture based on the personal narrative they've created for themselves - regardless of accuracy. It's about the biographer with an agenda, personal and/or political, more interested in proving their point than searching for the truth. It's about how knowing the truth is not necessarily desired nor helpful. It's about how the past is recreated by the present, how the present is in and of itself inaccurate and how the future is influenced by our expectations of it.
But please don't let my description make you think "The Stranger's Child" is a dry, dusty, philosophic screed. The author makes his points within the context of full-blooded cast of characters (including architecture and gardens), in service of a fascinating, if at times somewhat predictable, narrative that is an involving, propulsive page turner that leaves the reader wanting more. I, for one, would love to see Alan Hollinghurst bring the narrative into the present date at some time in the future.
Alan Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child" is that rare literary phenomenon that is as gripping in equal parts for what it wants to say and the story and characters used in service of those goals. This review is an unqualified rave for a novel that is clearly amongst the author's greatest successes. All that's left to add is a request to the author to not take seven years to gift us with his next glittering prize.
53 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
It started off well... then it became a tough slog
By terickson
I really wanted to love this book, and part 1 delivered. It was mysterious, unpredictable, beautifully written. But parts 2 and 3 felt like another writer took over and from then the book failed to fly and sing -- it was just a tough slog through the mud. I'm sorry to say it was so bad I put the book down in the middle of Part 3 because I was just too bored to go on. I didn't care about any of the characters by that point. The problem is, the author kills off or disappears the most interesting characters in the book, and he has an annoying habit of stopping the story just when relationships are STARTING to get interesting. And never picks up where he leaves off. There are too many other good books to read, I just called it a day on this one, and to me it's better to just stop at Part 1 and consider it a great little novella.
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