As should be clear by now, The Stranger's Child is a profoundly nostalgic book, in the strict Greek sense of "homesickness": it longs to go home to … It was the little dry comedy of their relations, which somehow turned on the fact that Hubert wasn’t lightly amused, perhaps didn’t even know there was anything comic about them. What does the novel as a whole say about our ability to truly know another person? This tells a riveting and complex saga with profound insight, plenty of intrigue and dashes of wit. Hollinghurst's writing is so precise. They stood staring at Susan's face in shocked bewilderment and horror. T. V.,’ look. . . Award winner. After Cecil leaves “Two Acres,” Daphne thinks: “Of course he had gone! So my five-star rating is solely for his penmanship (though he doesn't employ synonyms for the word "said". From the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Line of Beauty: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations. A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the ... A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the —The Washington Post "Vibrant. Near the end of the novel, Jennifer Keeping tells Rob that Paul Bryant’s story of his father’s heroic death in World War II is a fiction, that in fact Paul was a bastard. Part social history, part social comedy and wholly absorbing, The Stranger’s Child does everything a novel should do and makes it look easy." Imogen Brown is a normal 16 year old girl. . The Stranger's Child begins in 1913, with the handsome aristocratic Cambridge student and poet Cecil Valance visiting his college friend Geo In every phrase he finds the perfect word. “I suppose my child is straining her eyes out there somewhere,” she said, turning back to the warmer light of the room.“If she has her poetry books,” said Clara Kalbeck.“She’s been studying some of Cecil Valance’s poems. [Cecil's missing letters remain lost - perhaps forever. Cecil Valance is a poet of terrific talent who, according to a guest in a comfortably English countryside house, is "not so good as Swinburne or Lord Tennyson." The only negative thing to say is about the cover - I really don't like it. The interesting thing lies in the way that we don't recognize what is going on during those skips. Refresh and try again. "Remarkable. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide. My enjoyment of the first two sections of this novel was tinged by the suspicion that I was merely indulging in some Merchant Ivory–caliber WWI-era nostalgia—a suspicion perhaps fed by my having read, When I finished this novel, I just sat for five minutes, thinking of where this story had taken me in past week. The novel is filled with remarkable subtleties of perception. Last week I read Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child. Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist, and winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. The Stranger’s Child (2011), a novel by English poet and novelist Alan Hollinghurst, follows amateur poet Cecil Valance, whose life and tragic death in combat during World War I are modeled after the real-life figure Rupert Brooke. for their family at Pemberley, Darcy’s impressive estate. “Is this it?” he said, picking up a small parcel wrapped in shiny red paper. The poem, created as an autograph book keepsake for his lover's younger sister, Daphne, becomes the subject of speculation and debate for biographers and the generations that follow, as it contains hints about what might have happened during the visit and with whom. The characters, the time jumps, the poignancy of characters that were gone in the future sections and how memories of them became blurred and changed, and how ultimately they were forgotten, as we all will be. She glanced between the lines of trees, but with a sense of other shadowy perspectives, the kind of Cambridge talk that George often treated them to, where things were insisted on that couldn’t possibly be meant. —Cleveland Plain Dealer "Magnificent. What other important generational changes in English life does the novel trace? His understanding of the emotional landscape is complete. The two stars here rates my enjoyment level of this book rather than my valuation of the writing, which I'd give a four, and Hollinghurst's perceptive understandings of human foible and social identity. . They hadn't expected this-oh, —Geoff Dyer, New York Magazine "Charming. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. “Now do go and bring him in.”“I shall depart,” said Clara, quietly and gravely.“Oh, nonsense,” said Freda, surrendering as she had suspected she would, and getting up and going into the hall. It was an excitable voice that seemed to say it didn’t care who heard it, but in its tone there was also something mocking and superior. “The Stranger’s Child,” Alan Hollinghurst’s fifth novel, opens on a scene in Harrow and Wealdstone, a suburb north of London chosen by the author … Dorothy, honey, wait until you read "The Stranger's Child." For that I am eternally grateful. But Cecil is the real deal as a poet of the Sassoon/Graves/Brooke school, as we learn on reading a heavily edited scrap of paper retrieved from a wastebasket: "Love as vital as the spring / And secret as -- XXX (something!)." Do you agree with Rob—is Paul a sympathetic character? You just go straight up Stanmore Hill.”George wheezed with embarrassment, and also a kind of relief. Rich with Hollinghurst's signature gifts—haunting sensuality, delicious wit and exquisite lyricism— The Stranger's Child is a tour de force: a masterly novel about the lingering power of desire, how the heart creates its own history, and how legends are made. People come and go so quickly here!" The Stranger's Child Alan HollinghurstPicador, 576pp, £20If 2004 was the "Year of Henry James", as David Lodge has argued, 2011 is shaping up to be the Year of Henry James's Friends. . In "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy, perplexed by the sudden appearances and disappearances of characters into thin air, exclaims (I paraphrase): "Gosh. ,” said Clara, with a vague shake of the head.“We’re not allowed to know about it. In every phrase he finds the perfect word. This review may contain more information about the plot than you want to know. It is seven years since Alan Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker prize for The Line of Beauty, his Jamesian account of an eighties arriviste moving in high Tory circles. The Stranger’s Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. The last section was intended to show the reader what Cecil's reputation had ultimately come to look like, to give us a final update on the fortunes o. He said it had a way of “resolving itself into nooks.” This nook had its own little window, and was spanned by a broad oak beam.“They’re very late,” said Freda, “though George says Cecil is hopeless about time.”Clara looked tolerantly at the clock on the mantelpiece. —Newsday "Masterful. It kills me to give two stars to a book that took me the better part of a week to read, that has all the trappings of a book I would enjoy, and that will probably go on to win a mantel of literary awards. . It was a large hand, and somehow unfeeling; a hand more used to gripping oars and ropes than the slender fingers of sixteen-yearold girls. Grand British country house with driveway on front cover. What better to read over the Jubilee' --The Times In their six years of marriage, Elizabeth and Darcy have forged a peaceful, happy life The introduction, questions, and suggested further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel—his follow-up to 2004’s Man Booker Prize–winning The Line of Beauty. “Then I can see we shall get on,” he said. 1 She'd been lying in … (But I may, next up is the winner, “The Sense of a Ending.”) Hollinghurst has won the award before, but his latest effort is an incredible story of love, loyalty, and the art of poetry (and much, much more). She knew that Cecil was a guest and too grown-up to play a trick on, though George was surely in her power. Why is it important, in terms of Cecil Valance’s biography, that the true nature of his sexuality, and the true recipient of his famous poem “Two Acres,” be revealed? In fastidious - if occasionally fussy - prose Hollinghurst has fashioned his own kind of family saga - part Evelyn Waugh, part EM Forster, part Mary Wesley. There have been novels about H G Wells and Joseph Conrad; a film of Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami and a television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's novel-sequence Parade's End are on their way. . I've always been hesitant of contemporary literature for this exact reason: it's too derivative. Added to this is an exploration of the persistence of time and the transience of human memory. Five minutes later, as the sunset sky turned pink above the rockery, it began to seem possible that something worse had happened. . In 2004 Alan Hollinghurst made literary headlines by winning the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty. When she started to pull her fingers out, he squeezed again, for a second or two, before releasing her. Why does Dudley detest the house so violently? . She pushed the two of them apart, to give Daphne more prominence. “Which is your favourite?” she said, with a moment’s worry that she wouldn’t have heard of it. I perfectly understand the prize nominations and love of his work expressed widely on this site, but at the same time I was underwhelmed by the novel as a whole. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide. 8. . On 'The Stranger's Child' from the December 8, 2011 issue To the Editors : In his reply to Galen Strawson’s protest at his remarks about the Jewish characters in my novels [Letters, NYR , December 8, 2011], Daniel Mendelsohn writes, “I stand by my reading,” but his emphasis in fact falls differently from in his original review. . Now Alan … (Hey don't diss the hilux, that car is my baby). War is looming, and Cecil, who professes to like hunting out in the fields, seems pleased at the prospect of trying his skills out on the Kaiser's boys. . The Stranger’s Child is, among many other things, a wonderfully comic novel. Lives tangle and untangle in a literate, literary mystery at the heart of World War I by Man Booker Prize winner Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty, 2004, etc.). Freda had three children, the telephone, and an upstairs bathroom; Clara had none of these amenities, and it was hard to begrudge her when she laboured up the hill from damp little “Lorelei” in search of talk. It even results in a new gay relationship. She stopped to make adjustments to the framed photographs that stood in an expectant half-circle on a small round table. He said,“I brought these up with me in the van.”“Oh, they must be Cecil’s,” said Freda. The Stranger’s Child In the late summer of 1913 the young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at ‘Two Acres’, the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle, and of his sister, Daphne. 6. This was long-listed for the 2011 Booker Prize, and why it didn’t get on the short list and then win, I won’t know. She says they are very fine, but not so good as Swinburne or Lord Tennyson.”“Swinburne . Hollinghurst then jumps ahead to Daphne’s marriage to Cecil’s brother Dudley and commences the series of generation-spanning indiscretions and revisionist biographies that complicate Cecil’s legacy: he is variously a rebel, a tedious war poet, and, possibly, the father of Daphne’s daughter. How do we know the truth about anyone's life? . “Let’s all read out our favourite poems—if you like to read aloud.”“Oh yes!” said Daphne, excited already, though she’d never heard Hubert read out anything except a letter in The Times that he agreed with. . Does it matter? In what ways might it be said to celebrate them—if at all? Houndvoice.com) that makes it appear as if Tennyson is reading his poetry [p. 424]. The Stranger’s Child Alan Hollinghurst. [See Prepub Alert, 4/4/11. In the second of its five parts, “The Stranger’s Child” moves forward to 1926. Do we as readers of the novel know Cecil more accurately than George, Daphne, Dudley—even Sebastian Stokes? Hollinghurst's carefully written, philosophically charged novel invites us to consider that question. In what ways does World War I cast a shadow over the entire novel? When I finished this novel, I just sat for five minutes, thinking of where this story had taken me in past week. More By and About This Author. This novel explores Hollinghurst’s usual themes: sexuality, family and social dynamics and the nature of art and artists. . How does Paul’s own secret past shed light on his motivations and tactics as a biographer? . 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