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Tim O'Brien

53. Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger's Child


Never read any of his before. Enjoyed it but it was long.

Why are all the characters (nearly all-male) gay? Even the central female characters think trade-in about being taken the way a man takes another man. Also, the age gaps were weird; most of the characters started off in late adolescence and were next seen in old age. No one at the 'prime of life' where typically a heterosexual couple's relationship breaks down; usually as the male trades in for a younger model leaving the female during childrearing.

Ostensibly about a Rupert Brooke style WW1 poet, killed in action, with whom many of the rest of the cast are obsessed, not entirely clear why - class, physical beauty.

It becomes a rather bleak novel maybe about the decline of the English upper class, as the obsession seems/becomes rather pointless.

I would read another one.


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