- 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 byAlan Hollinghurst .Plot summary
The novel is the story of an English
homosexual , Edward Manners, who, disaffected with life, moves to a town inFlanders 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 onFernand Khnopff andJames 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
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.