The Folding Star

Infobox Book |
name = The Folding Star


image_caption =
author = Alan Hollinghurst
country = Great Britain
language = English
genre = Novel
publisher = Chatto & Windus Ltd
release_date = 1994
media_type =
pages =
isbn =

"The Folding Star" is a 1994 novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

Plot summary

The novel is the story of an English homosexual, Edward Manners, who, disaffected with life, moves to a town in Flanders where he teaches two students English. One, Marcel, is good but ugly while the other, Luc, is bad but, to the protagonist, deeply beautiful. The novel also deals with Manners' emerging relationship with Marcel's father who curates a museum of symbolist paintings by Edgard Orst (modelled on Fernand Khnopff and James Ensor).

Many of the characters (Manners, Orst, Marcel's father, Luc) are marked by obsession with others. The past continually intrudes into the twilight world Hollinghurst evokes, dragging Manners back to England for a time.

Main themes

The novel shows many of Hollinghurst's features as a writer, controlled prose and a keen eye for social custom. Above all it shows the dichotomy Hollinghurst often outlines between aesthetic sensibilities and lush surroundings and the grasping physical desires and acts that preoccupy his characters.

Literary significance and criticism

The Folding Star won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1994.

It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

The "New York Review of Books" described it thus: "You could read this novel as a miniature "Remembrance of Things Past". Or as an expanded "Death in Venice"... or as a homosexual "Lolita".... It is an immense pleasure to read, [filled with] funniness and poetry, handled with amazing sensitivity and accuracy." [Quoted at [http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/catalogue/details2.asp?isbn=9781582340036&cf=0&search=&isbns=&page=85 Bloomsbury USA] ]
Peter Kemp, "Times Literary Supplement" critic, said, "Even in its sexiest moments, it never loses its intellectual poise. Dry witticisms intersperse sweaty couplings." [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3758156.stm BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hollinghurst's rise to Booker glory ] ]

References