Alan Hollinghurst's new novel is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin Woodfield, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin, a would-be actor increasingly disenchanted with the countryside; Robin's 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, whose life is transformed by house music and a tab of ecstasy.
As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs,country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life, the hunger for contact and the fear of commitment, the need for permanence and the continual disruptions of sex. At once lyrical and farcical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists.
About the Author
Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004.
Industry Reviews
"The Spell contains the most delicately sensuous portrait-painting... brilliant imagery... and hilarious cross-purpose jokes... Sentence by sentence the novel weaves its magic." - Independent
"A masterpiece of sustained literary titillation." - The Times
"Love, lust and loss among a group of middle-class gay Englishmen... Young and old, the town and the country, the wild and respectable: Holinghurst explores each of these uneasy conflicts with wit, generosity and sharply observed comedy." - Mail on Sunday
"A bewitchingly beautiful tale... confirms his pre-eminence among the prose writers of his generation." - Daily Telegraph
"Comic fantasy is grounded in a wealth of sharp observation and psychological insight. Hollinghurst has lost none of his authority." - Evening Standard
'A sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue... stylish, original, bizarrely beautiful' - Francis Wyndham, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year
"A wry novel of manners in the fashion of Jane Austen's work, this novel through its omniscient point of view, exposes these stressed Londoners as they protect the ones they love (presumably each other, but certainly themselves) with small lies and little omissions. Their mixed-up relationships and compromised interests find perfect expression in the tangled garden they have no time to tend." - Library Journal
"A witty and ingenious writer, Hollinghurst weaves prose that shifts deftly from steamy sex to genteel country living, from edgy cocaine-fed conversations to delicately sensuous observations about the "tussocky hillside" or "crowded dim moons of cow-parsley." He also conveys a significant empathy for the perennial struggle of urban gay men to find true love without forfeiting their sexual autonomy. The author excels at pithy character portraits, and his keen observations of human nature (gay and otherwise) give a depth and realism even to the bit players in this marvelous tale." - Publishers Weekly
"What distinguishes The Spell from most romantic comedies is the author's keen observation of gay mores, along with a graceful style that smoothly accommodates earthy details." - Dennis Drabelle, Salon
