I've just finished this. It was an impulse buy from the Amazon Kindle Store. Good but not great. One you want to continue to read to get it finished but like "In the Line of Beauty" no great affinity or sympathy with any of the characters.
It spans about a century and is divided into five parts. At first I thought it was going to be like Atonement but the first part is perhaps more akin to Maurice: gauche, upper middle class family, all of whom fall for the upper class boy. Set before the first world war.
Part two skips to the 1920s and the eve of the General Strike.
The next two parts are set in the late sixties and seventies respectively, topped off with a jump forwards to 2008ish.
It paints a picture of Britain during those times but the biographer's pursuit of the truth about his subject never quite takes off. It hints at the history of homosexuality and the law but doesn't quite get there. The speculation in later years over whether one of the characters had affairs with his male friends is of limited interest to the reader because we have already been told about them.
Somehow the book never quite takes off, I don't particularly warm to any of the characters and while I enjoy the gradually changing Britain he depicts, I don't take any great message away from the book.
Worth a read but not the best book I will read this year.
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1 comment:
I have read this one too. Ok, I lie. I read the first 25% then quit. It was almost like he was going for some sort of literary acclaim, the prose was so creatively written, it spoiled my enjoyment of the story and yes, the plot just never took off. Too much time spent on the process and not enough on the wider story (including lack of thought when it comes to the audience)!
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