The Line of Beauty

I'm beginning to think that any book that takes place in the 80's has to involve conservative politics and cocaine. I'm also wondering if it is possible for anyone to write a piece of gay fiction without mentioning AIDS or someone dying from it. If your book is gay fiction taking place in the 80's, you get all three. Introducing The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, lauded as a "gay" book to win the Man Booker Prize for fiction.

The story surrounds Nicholas Guest, kid from the wrong side of the London Bridge who is charming enough to freeload his way into the home of one of his college buddies who incidentally is the son of a conservative politician. Nick is also gay. Over the course of a decade, Nick gets laid, Nick gets high, Nick meets the the woman Thatcher herself, and Nick dodges the gloom and doom of "the disease".

And like another 80's phenomena, the magical recipe of all those John Hughes Pretty in Pink type movies, Nick realizes that the only thing worse than not being an insider is thinking all along that you were. Or at least could be. Mr. Hollinghurst paints an interesting picture of inadvertant social climbing against a backdrop of Thatcher era politics and gives it a gay human interest slant. This human didn't think it got all that interesting until after page 300. Before that it was a big "so what". I guess one could derive a sort of parallel between the classes including their successes and their demise. But really, I just didn't feel the need to think that hard in order to be entertained.

I'll stick to Bret Easton Ellis. Now there is a man who captured the social climbing, cocaine laden, gay sexy, yet conservative 80's with gusto. Check out American Psycho (not the movie, PLEASE) if that's your speed.