The Swimming-Pool Library
Published on 2. July 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
432 pages
978-1-78487-031-7 (ISBN)
Description
Young, gay, William Beckwith spends his time, and his trust fund, idly cruising London for erotic encounters. When he saves the life of an elderly man in a public convenience an unlikely job opportunity presents itself - the man, Lord Nantwich, is seeking a biographer. Will agrees to take a look at Nantwich's diaries. But in the story he unravels, a tragedy of twentieth-century gay repression, lurk bitter truths about Will's own privileged existence.
Reviews / Votes
The first major novel in Britain to put gay life in its modern place and context... A historic novel and historic debut * Guardian * Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny * Daily Telegraph * The tautness and energy of Alan Hollinghurst's novel derive from its ambiguous status a it shimmers somewhere between pastoral romance and sulphurous confession, between an affectionate and credible rendering of contemporary mores and lurid melodrama...classic English prose...surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author * Sunday Times * 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 * New York Times Book Review * The Swimming-Pool Library is a perfect debut, in that it arrives confidently, with a fully formed style and bank of themes that the author would go on to explore for years to come * Attitude * This bold and emotional story is a must-read * Good Housekeeping UK *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
303 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78487-031-7 (9781784870317)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Alan Hollinghurst
The Swimming-Pool Library
E-Book
09/2010
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€8.99
Available for download
Person
Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.