In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at 'Two Acres', the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but
it is on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation, an evocation of an England about to change forever.
Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century, and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties. In a sequence
of widely separated episodes we follow the two families through
startling changes in fortune and circumstance.
At the centre of this often richly comic history of sexual mores and literary
reputation runs the story of Daphne, from innocent girlhood to wary old age. Around her Hollinghurst draws an absorbing picture of an England constantly in flux.
General
| Imprint: |
Picador
|
| Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
| Release date: |
July 2011 |
| First published: |
July 2011 |
| Authors: |
Alan Hollinghurst
|
| Dimensions: |
235 x 152 x 41mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Paperback
|
| Pages: |
563 |
| Edition: |
Open market ed |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-330-51396-8 |
| Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
| LSN: |
0-330-51396-6 |
| Barcode: |
9780330513968 |
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Review This Product
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 | Review
by: Amanda P.
When a book begins with the agony of description, I shudder.
When it continues with a girl telling me everything for a chapter, it's unbearable.
When it's filled with boring characters who happen to live in beautiful houses and write poetry, I can't pretend it doesn't matter. You just know there will be a crisis of sexuality / homosexuality, a problem with alcohol and the ironic observation of the privileged upper class..
I wasn't disappointed. In late 1913 the young poet, Cecil Valance stays at the aristocratic home of his Cambridge friend, George Sawle. Cecil writes George’s 16-year-old sister, Daphne, a poem which becomes important to an England that is about to go to war and change forever. Etc. Etc.
It's a horrible book. If I could give it 0/5 I would. Who chooses these terribly pretentious attempts at literary genius?
It must be the 2000 people who actually read them. The rest of the reading planet have other things to do. Like read good books
Amanda Patterson
www.writerswrite.co.za
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