Three themes in The Stranger's Child

Some themes in Alan Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child," in preparation for book-group discussion tonight: homosexuality through the century, which I think has to be the main theme of the novel. Virtually every male character in the novel is homosexual, which shows suggest either very narrow social circles, English life is quite different from American, or intentional decision on Hollinghurst's part to use the novel to explore this particular theme. We see the evolution from part 1, when Cecil and George go off into the woods around Two Acres for furtive sex, and nobody, apparently, has even a hint of an idea that they're other than friends from Cambridge - homosexuality is a deep secret (though probably not at Cambridge, where the novel never takes us) through various other degrees of secrets and shames to the final section when homosexuality is just an accepted part of London literary society, several of the homosexual couples are married, and the whole driving "mystery" of the novel, was Cecil a gay writer?, is totally uninteresting to all the characters - they'd long ago moved beyond the phase of "outing" writers. Second theme, the changing of taste, and therefore, reputation, over time. At first, everyone is gushing over Cecil's poetry, which struck me from the excerpts in the first chapter as juvenile and derivative (didn't know if this was Hollinghurst's limitations or his intention), then he becomes a famous war poet, then that reputation slips as people realize he was being appreciated largely for the romance of his life - a hero's death in war, a career cut short - and by the end he's clearly a second-rate poet largely forgotten; similarly, the views of architecture regarding Corley, Cecil's family seat, at first seen as a beautiful country estate, by the end as a Victorian monstrosity, and then as a curiosity. Third, literary and historical sleuthing - though this theme doesn't really open up until part 4 (of 5) when Paul Bryant becomes a literary biographer and tries to learn the secrets of Cecil's life. I really wanted to like this part of the novel, but it unfortunately falls flat and has little payoff: far too much presented to us in narration and in conversational summary, the "mysteries" to Paul are largely material that we have known from the outset of the novel, and the one big reveal - Corinna is actually a "stranger's child" - that is, Cecil's daughter - and not Dudley's daughter, is no big deal to us as Corinna plays almost no role in this novel. It's a very long journey for a very small amount of info. The novel is clearly a response to the challenge laid down by Atonement - can you write a contemporary English novel about all the cliches of English fiction - landed gentry, country estates, wartime England, boarding schools, university life - spanning multiple generations, and have anything fresh to say? Also a response to Byatt? Answer is yes, to a degree - their novels did not do much with the theme of homosexuality, but did a lot more with social class, a topic of no great interest to Hollinghurst.