The modernist/postmodernist break in literary studies is hotly contested. A fairly clear example of the dichotomy can be seen when Joyce's ULYSSES is contrasted with FINNEGAN'S WAKE. If discontinuity and disjunction are seen as the hallmarks of the postmodern novel (Acker, DeLillo, Auster), Alan Hollinghurst's second novel THE FOLDING STAR qualifies only in part under that rubric. If his first novel THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY illustrates a decidedly modernist cast of mind, this second work, with its undecidable ending, operates at least within the shadow of a postmodernist aesthetic. Whereas the protagonist of the first book embodies the modern well-to-do aesthete, THE FOLDING STAR offers a spiritually impoverished main character whose obsession with a young Belgian boy, his student, suggests that of Humbert Humbert for Lolita and manages to capture the elegiac tone of Nabokov's masterwork. And while both Hollinghurst novels decode mysteries as the action that gives impetus to the narrative, in THE FOLDING STAR, this devise remains only that. The search for Luc Altidore, while culminating in actual physical peregrinations on the part of the protagonist, is ultimately an interior search for the meaning of love in the age of AIDS and in the tenuousness of human relationships. Hollinghurst's feat with this work is the accomplishment of a postmodern ironic aesthetic in conjunction with an old-fashion romance not unlike Susan Sontag's THE VOLCANO LOVER (though the tones of the two works are similarly elegiac, most other aspects could not be more different). Read THE SWIMMING POOL LIBRARY first in order to get to know Hollinghurst's at times rather baroque style. Afterwards the experience of reading THE FOLDING STAR will be greatly enhanced. The narrative enfolds the reader in a myth as old as that of the shepherds catching sight of the Star of Bethlehem; and as in that ancient tale, the moment of discovery signals a birth and a rebirth.

From Edward to Luc to Orst, the characters lept from the pages of this book and continue to saunter in my memories long after I finished it. I'm afraid to say that I found myself in all of them at one point in my life (perhaps in many of our lives); the seducer and the innocent. (One thing's for certain, I wish Patrick were real...I'd have loved to have met him...perhaps I would have been obsessed as well.) Definitely one of the better renditions of obsessive love that I have ever read. What an amazing accomplishment this novel is...simply beautiful.

Forget A.S. Byatt, forget Tom Stoppard! Both writers are amateurs in comparison to the top wordsmith of the 20th century, Alan Hollinghurst. If Proust and Mann met and could reproduce, Mr. Hollinghurst would be their love child. A haunting tale of impossible love, packed with beautifully written arcana, this masterpiece will keep reading all night.

Alan Hollinghurst may be the most intelligent gay English-language novelist writing today, with the possible exceptions of Edmund White and Gore Vidal, but Hollinghurst is neither so precious as White nor so nutty as Vidal. THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY was his first effort, and remains his best. It marvelously captures the life enjoyed by a wealthy, handsome, leisured, and predatory London aristocrat, William Beckwith, in the early Eighties, and the way his life changes when he meets Chalres Beckwith, a titled man whom Beckwith incorrectly assumes lived a life very similar to his own. The novel is basically about the absence of gay history at the time it was written, and the ways in which privilege and security can be taken for granted. The book read very differently in 1988 (at the darkest moments of the AIDS crisis) than it does today, and its message seems less elegiac in many ways than before. It's not a novel without its problems: although Beckwith is clearly intended to be understood as morally blinkered (and he does get a something of a comeuppance eventually), his incessant vanity and self-congratulation does make him eventually a bit of a bore as first-person narrators go. Hollinghurst also witholds crucial information about the plot until the very last fifty pages of the novel, as he did in his next effort THE FOLDING STAR, so that you're not even fully aware of what the mystery guiding the novel's action really is until fairly late in the game. While this makes the final revelation more of a surprise, the book reads much better the second time than the first, when (as again with THE FOLDING STAR) there seems to be little plot to sustain your interest. Most readers have found Hollinghrust's third book, THE SPELL, the weakest of his efforts so far: it will be interesting to see if he can either repeat or surmount the success of THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY.

This novel is well-written, and vacillates between extremely well-written fiction and minutely detailed erotica. The story centers around Will, a promiscuous, narcisscistic, wealthy gay young Londoner in the pre-AIDS era of the early 1980's. Will has no financial or moral restrictions. He leads us on a journey through the hot summer of 1983, that is at times graphic, and also historically engrossing.

Will Beckwith's adventures are by far some of the most graphically-detailed I have ever read, but highly erotic for both gay and straight readers. Concurrently, Will encounters an elderly British Lord who wants Will to write his life story. There is an undercurrent of duplicity in all of his relationships, from his passionate, physical affair with the young, uneducated hotel employee, Phil, to the exact nature of his professional dealings with his Lordship. Also, there is a pitying tone to his relationship with his best friend, a doctor who is also gay, but who is the only person who seems to have Will's heart, instead of his libido.

This is not your ordinary novel. Alan Hollinghurst is an extremely intelligent writer, who can also write with an almost animalistic sense of depravity. It is almost like reading two novels; on one page, extremely explicit sex, on another, intellectual stimulation. It is certainly one of the most unique books of its kind I have ever read.

I recently re-read this book. It is a unique amalgam of very serious, high tone fiction and highly graphic, unadulterated scenes involving the kind of sexuality that would not make it into books that school systems adopt for even advanced high school courses. The narrator is rather selfish, aristocratic, but also appealing, in that, he makes no excuses for his human failings. At times, the depiction of gay haunts and habits is highly satirical, for example, the repeated references to "Trouble for Men," a cologne which wafts through the changing room of the swimming pool club that the narrator frequents [perhaps a dig at the extreme popularity which the Calvin Klein fragrance "Obsession" once had.] There is a two-tier structure to the work that is a little bit hard to deal with: the modern protagonist is contrasted with a man from an older era, whose life in earlier decades, when gay men were more in the shadows is meant to provide a counterpoint to the relative freedom which the younger man enjoys. This book is a rich, complex work which repays close reading and rereading.

This novel describes the emotional (and occasionally sexual) interplay beween four British gay men: Robin is 45 and has recently lost his long-term lover; Alex is in his late thirties; Justin is 35 and has just left Alex for Robin; and Danny, 22, Robin's son, is also gay.

The readers who found this book boring and the characters unsympathetic didn't read the same book I did. I found the situations believable and the characters quite genuine. Yes, they were a little self-absorbed but if you were mourning the loss of a loved one/relationship/your youth wouldn't you be a little self-absorbed?

The London gay scene is detailed in great relish, as is Alex's maiden trip, with Danny's help, on Ecstasy. People will be reading this book well into the future to find out what middle-class gay British life was like at the turn of the century. And Hollinghurst writes beautifully; I would rather read his prose than that of almost anyone else.

"The Spell" is something of a chamber piece so if you're looking for the thrills and action of "The Swimming Pool Library" you may well be disappointed. But a modest effort to understand the differing emotional makeup of these four men will be paid off in a first-rate round of character development and storytelling.

Hollinghurst has created a very moving work of fiction with "The Spell." It's the story of four gay men at various stages of life whose lives intersect. Hollinghurst's deft style brings the characters to life realistically and compassionately. He handles issues like loss, rejection, aging, parenting, jealousy, and sexuality with the precision of a patient and gifted surgeon. He cuts right through to the core of human emotions.

Hollinghurst's command of the English language is admirable and his prose is both soothing and sensual. This book is a real treat. I expected another long description of campy, drug-filled nights out on the town filled with sex and the hedonistic attitudes so common among gay men but instead discovered a moving story filled with expressive, three dimensional characters. I highly recommend it.

I've read all three of Hollinghurst's novels and must be the only one who thinks The Folding Star was his best, this the next best, and his first, Swimming Pool Library, the least enjoyable. It is a pleasure to read a book that one doesn't constantly feel compelled to edit in one's mind as one is reading it. Hollinghurst's style is lyrical, with a descriptive economy more typical of poetry than of prose. His descriptions of sex, moreover, are more true to life than most writers provide, without, in my view, becoming pornographic. Likewise, the standout aspect of this novel, it seems to me, is Hollinghurst's dead-on description of the interaction of ecstasy (the drug, not the concept) and music. I would not have thought it possible to capture that experience so well in writing. Also welcome is the interaction among this book's three generations of characters, which reflects the interesting ability that gay life sometimes has, contrary to certain stereotypes, to cross age boundaries. All that said, the characters are not terribly interesting, this novel fails to exhibit the skillful manipulation of multiple plot lines that characterized his previous two, and, again in sharp contrast to his prior two novels, the end of The Spell is a bit of a disappointment. Nevertheless, I sped through it with pleasure.