Book group : thumbs down on Stranger's Child.

Consensus opinion at Book Group last night was not kind to Alan Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child" - even JRi, who suggested the book, said she didn't like it as much on 2nd reading. Hm. Opinions ranged from the downright negative - B in particularly expressing the view that his writing was terrible and commonplace - a view I disagree, with, BTW - B. said that he continually uses the verb said, which I think is a totally appropriate verb for moving dialogue along and I hate authors who self-consciously search for elegant variations on that verb - and that he uses too many adverbs - I would agree that adverbs are a hindrance, but I didn't notice any preponderance. I found his writing pretty good - quite a few passages that I "checked" or marked with an enthusiastic "Ha!" That said: I can't help but feel that the book was very poorly constructed: the long narrative span seems cobbled together with the great shifts from section to section making the narrative needlessly difficult to follow and in a weird way allowing Hollinghurst to take whatever liberties with the characters he wants: Daphne can "become" a mean-spirited alcoholic because the author can just assert her status, rather than have her grow and evolve, as a more traditional narrative would do. More important, I think he let the opportunity for a good literary sleuth story slip write through his hands, as he tells us all or most of the "secrets" right in the first chapter and the few that he withholds, about Corinna's parentage for example, are irrelevant to the plot of the novel because Corinna (and Hubert) are minor characters at best. I did note the 3 major themes of the novel, as posted in recent days: homosexuality and changing attitudes toward it over the century (L strongly agreed), the change of taste over time (led to some discussion about whether the War Poets and Tennyson are still worth reading - I'm encouraged to look again), and the literary sleuth. JRi also discussed the famous British issue of class, upstairs/downstairs, etc., which to me is always hovering in the background but never brought to the forefront in this novel. Also, the issue of British schooling, and of the life of a biographer: I noted that biographers (and journalists) are thieves, in Janot Malcolm's famous observation, but conceded these are different from historians. (In Stranger, Paul is like a thief and Sebby and the others who wrote about Cecil are cover-up artists.) We were let down by the soggy ending, and generally just without a lot of enthusiasm for this novel. I pointed out that Line of Beauty is a far better novel, tighter in structure, elegaic, and moving, if rather graphic (opening chapter, if I remember). I also admired his homages to MacEwan and Byatt (friendly or not-so-friendly rivals?) and to the late great Sebald (the visit back to Two Acres my favorite part of the novel). I may in fact go back and read In Memorium.