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Alan Hollinghurst
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The Swimming-Pool Library: A novel (Lambda Literary Award) Paperback – September 19, 1989

by Alan Hollinghurst (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 826 ratings
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The dazzling first novel from the best-selling, Booker Prize-Winning author of The Line of Beauty and The Sparsholt Affair.

An enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. The Swimming-Pool Library focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and Lord Nantwich, an elderly man searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    September 19, 1989
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0679722564
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679722564
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Exquisite." —The New York Times

“A buoyant, smart, irrepressibly sexy book . . . that has the heft and resonance of a classic modernist novel, the sprawl and surprise of an intimate memoir.” —The Village Voice Literary Supplement

“I can think of no other book that is at once so literary and so highly sexed, with the exception of Lolita and Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers.” —Edmund White

“The Swimming-Pool Library beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions. It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction’s solid grace.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

A literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. "Impeccably composed and meticulously particular in its observation of everything" (Harpers & Queen), it focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, an old Africa hand, searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (September 19, 1989)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679722564
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679722564
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 826 ratings

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Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
826 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

close reader
5.0 out of 5 stars A very very good novel that transcends its labels
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2013
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I was going to begin by saying that I almost wish this were not a "gay novel," but what I really wish is that so many people would stop referring to it as such. How many reviewers, for example, would start out by referring to, say, Sense and Sensibility as a "heterosexual novel"? Of course Hollinghurst's novel couldn't be what it is without homosexuality, but then you could say the same about the heterosexuality of many "straight" novels. The important point is that it's a very very good novel.
Nor is it enough to say that it is well-written. It is also beautifully composed, something that goes much deeper and is much more complex than mere "good" writing. For several chapters, the book may seem episodic and rather pointless, but then, almost subconsciously, the reader starts to sense the heave of a theme, the faint strain of a story, like the weaving of beautiful music. And then you're caught and swept along . . . .
I won't belabor plot details and character analyses. There have been plenty of other reviews covering those points. What struck me was that after it was all over, it wasn't all over. I've been haunted for days by possibilities of interpretation that only re-reading might help to clear up. Just how trustworthy was our narrator, after all? Just how "nice" was Lord Nantwich, after all? How much of what happened to Will was contrived far in advance? Questions about the ultimate meanings of certain events and about the real emotional impact of events last long after the final page. It's a living, pulsing piece of music. It's a wonderful work of art.
15 people found this helpful
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Stephen Culp
4.0 out of 5 stars I like my representation desegregated
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2018
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I've managed to avoid reading this for so long because of my aversion to ghetto-fied culture. Instead of gay novels, gay movies or gay plays, I'd prefer novels and movies and plays with gay people in them. I like my representation desegregated, thanks.

But while definitely a gay novel, "The Swimming Pool Library" is extremely well-written and -crafted; it's also stuffed to the gills with lewd and graphic sex. It's Maugham with a dirty mind, Waugh with a lascivious smile.

In pre-AIDS London, William Beckwith is a young, idle Adonis who's drawn to barely-legal working class men. He's a faithless, promiscuous narcissist who demands fidelity while being incapable of it himself.

His misanthropy is barely concealed under a shallow veneer of insincere smiles and sarcasm (a trait I recognize from more than a few upper class British twits I've met in my professional life).

Beckwith makes a daily habit of picking up lower class men and cruising the showers at the local health club, a routine interrupted by a blooming friendship with an aging member of the house of lords.

For lack of anything better to do, he begins to explore the gay past (via the journals and letters of his new octogenarian friend). It's quickly apparent that white gay history can be summarized by a host of c-words: classism, colonialism, condescension, cruelty, complacency.

A big reveal toward the end implicating Beckwith's legacy with the systemic oppression of gay people upsets him for an afternoon, but his mood lifts in the gym shower when he encounters his next fresh, hungry distraction.

It's brave writing, not just because of the unapologetically explicit sex, but also in its fairly ruthless depiction of white privilege in gay culture.

It's gutsy of Hollinghurst to build a world around this unsavory guy, but we follow because it's a well-told tale, worthwhile despite (and because of) the unflattering image reflected in the gilt-framed mirror he hands us.
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Courtney
3.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty so much
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014
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I enjoyed Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty so much, that I purchased this. This book actually wasn't as engaging for me. I actually like reading fiction by authors who identify as homosexual, even though I am not one. I enjoy reading about that alternate world of experience, I feel as if I am learning something and I am also intrigued by lifestyles so different and foreign to my own. However, I didn't like the main character of Will. I found him to be lazy, promiscuous, predatory, vain, entitled.., actually there wasn't anything that I liked about his personality at all. The story did have an interesting moralistic twist that sort of taught the egocentric, pleasure seeking and shallow Will a real life lesson. I don't like to reveal plot details, I feel it spoils the book for the potential reader, but I will say that Hollinghurst is a gifted author and the book is worth a shot.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Compradora
2.0 out of 5 stars Livro arrastado
Reviewed in Brazil on June 17, 2019
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História boa, cenário interessante, mas o livro dentro do livro é chato.
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ROBERT Ramsay
5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended to anyone who wants a good, long read
Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2017
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This is one of the best books I've read - so well written. It depicts what goes on inside the heads of people who frequent gyms and swimming pools. There were a few words I should have looked up in the dictionary, but was too lazy to bother with. The use of such words could have been annoying but wasn't - it told me the author was making the effort to raise his writing above that of the general crowd. Well done.
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Gordieh
5.0 out of 5 stars Great tale
Reviewed in Spain on August 29, 2017
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This is an amazing story told in a very unusual way with humour and pathos as well as intrigue. Alan Hollinghurst is an amazing story teller
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Phil-Don
3.0 out of 5 stars Bien écrit - mais gâché par l'excès de sexe
Reviewed in France on March 28, 2015
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Alan Hollinghurst écrit bien, incontestablement, dans un style soigné et littéraire. Le problème, c'est que l'omniprésence du sexe / de l'homosexualité dans le roman exaspère assez vite (c'est également vrai pour 'The Spell' et 'The Folding Star'). Dans 'The Swimmingpool Library', William - le narrateur - est un jeune homme riche, beau, intelligent - et gay - qui mène une vie de loisirs (culture, sport et sexe). Un jour, il sauve la vie d'un vieil homme faisant une attaque dans des toilettes publiques, lieu de rendez-vous pour sexe facile entre hommes. L'homme, un vieux lord - homosexuel bien sûr ,- lui propose de devenir son biographe... L'omniprésence du sexe fait qu'on en oublie les aspects plus profonds du roman, pourtant bien présents.

L'autre aspect négatif du roman a été pour moi son narrateur antipathique: un jeune riche 'pourri gâté', narcissique, suffisant, condescendant et poseur intellectuel.

'The Swimmingpool Library' est mon 5ème livre par Hollinghurst, pas le meilleur selon moi. Les deux que je recommanderais sont 'The Line of Beauty' et 'The Stranger's Child'.
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Peter Large
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2011
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This is the best book I have read for a very long time. Although the characters are not ones you might meet every day, every one of them is totally alive and convincing. Hollinghurst's prose is rather rich, but the atmosphere thereby evoked is gripping, the places described totally believable. A gay novel without sex would not be worth reading, I loved the sex scenes that other reviewers here complain about, and indeed they are mild in comparison with erotica/porn. None of the characters except Phil and possibly James are really likeable, but that does not in any way detract from the story. Having finished it, I am currently re-reading it carefully and finding treasures and allusions that I missed on my first read. I only then realized that there are no female characters in the book except in one scene, where Will talks to his sister Philippa over the phone. A totally magnificent novel, well deserving the Somerset Maugham prize.
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