The Swimming-Pool Library: A novel (Lambda Literary Award) (Vintage International)
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Description
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. Read more
Publisher : Vintage
Publication date : September 19, 1989
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0679722564
ISBN-13 : 64
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 5.1 x 0.75 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #113,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #71 in LGBTQ+ Historical Fiction (Books) #206 in LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction (Books) #1,686 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
In Alan Hollinghurst's debut novel, The Swimming-Pool Library, Will, a promiscuous, self-absorbed layabout, finds his upper-class world both shaken and stirred after he saves the life of an elderly gay aristocrat in a public lavatory. Both grateful, and believing his life story to be one worthy of a written biography, Lord Nantwich asks that Will assume authorship of his project. Refusing to make a commitment, Will agrees to research Nantwich's life through the man's diaries and many years worth of letters, and then come to a decison. As the 25-year old's friendship with the elder man develops, Will finds it difficult to concentrate much on research; he's much too busy cruising the showers at the clubby gym where he swims, partying with best (and only?) friend, James, picking up various young men (emphasis on the "young") around town and chumming around with his preternaturally mature 6-year old nephew, Rupert, a character who is not only endearing but exceedingly wise and sophisticated. Meanwhile, Will's teenage black boyfriend, Arthur, a recent refugee from the drug-related violence of public housing, has disappeared without a trace so that's one more thing occupying Will's mind, if not his time. Set in the pre-AIDS London of the early 80's, The Swimming-Pool Library vividly depicts the free-spirited camaraderie of openly gay men (particularly the relationship between Lord Nantwich and Will) while examining issues pertaining to class, racism, police entrapment and homophobia, all presented with an edgy urgency that pulls the reader further into the tale Alan Hollinghurst so skillfully weaves. There is a lot of (often explicit) sex going on in The Swimming-Pool Library but the book never feels exploitative or smutty; indeed, it is sins of the distant past that cause the novel's protagonists to question their place in the world, and to re-examine themselves and their privileged lifestyles. I first read Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty several years ago and immediately found myself admiring the quality of his writing and storytelling. I find that I enjoyed The Swimming-Pool Library at least as much, if not more. My familiarity with the world portrayed in both novels, and of the wonderful characters inhabiting this world only enhances my appreciation for his work: reading his books gives me a genuine sense of a place and time when I was, for better and for worse, a lot like the young men he writes about. I highly recommend The Swimming-Pool Library as a precursor to The Line of Beauty, both of which are among my favorite works of modern fiction.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2018 by B. Wells
Format: Paperback
This is the first "gay genre" book I've read. I bought it because the author just won the 2004 Booker Prize. Alan Hollinghurst writes beautifully. His prose has a certain limpid clarity accomplished the very best English authors. Its form is that of a narrative memoir, and contains within it, in part, diary entries by one of the main characters. In all, The Swimming Pool Library has more of the overall "feel" of a diary than a work of fiction. Hollinghurst's attention to detail is superb; his descriptions of the physical aspects of people, landscapes, and architecture are superb, and his evocation on London night life has a real feeling of authenticity. Strange to say, for a gay man Hollinghurst seems to take a surprisingly dispassionate approach to romance in this book. The author is quite spare in entering into the psychology of his characters in toto, which, in a sense, is appropriate, since the human heart -both our own and others'- remains, for the most part, a delicious and maddening mystery. The only reason why I did not give this five stars is that the last ten percent of the book seems to become a bit befuddled in its plotting, and what resolutions there are appear to be a bit rushed, and not altogether as tightly planned as the previous 90%. In the end, The Swimming Pool Library just seems to peter out, and whatever insight into his characters Hollinghurst had earlier in the book seems to get a little lost. Also, for me, the total lack of female characters made The Swimming Pool Library feel more than a bit claustrophobia-inducing. However, the very best fiction leaves one with a deeper appreciation of the changes and chances of one's own life, and the lives of other people. Hollinghurst beautifully achieves this for the greater part of this book, but loses it at the very end. Unless, of course, there is a "to be continued..." that I missed.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2004 by Steve
Format: Paperback
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014 by Courtney
Format: Paperback
I’m glad I read Alan Hollinghurst’s later novel, The Line of Beauty, before reading his first. If it hadn’t been for that previous assurance that Hollinghurst writes poignant, literary work, I would have been baffled by The Swimming-Pool Library’s overall lack of purpose. A huge portion of the book is dedicated to Will cruising for men and describing his escapades. The “point” of the book doesn’t become obvious until the last forty pages or so. These last pages save it; giving it a thoughtfulness and an unexpected hypocrisy that The Line of Beauty also explores. The obviously literary thread of the novel is the subplot with Charles, an older man who requests that Will write his biography. Will reads Charles’ old diary entries, creating two first-person narratives that describe gay life in separate periods. The book becomes more interesting (or less, arguably) when viewed from a 2015 perspective as well: Will sees himself as among the ‘liberated’ gay men of 80s London, while I view Will and his contemporaries as participating in an underground subculture that exists because society was not yet accepting enough for gay life to thrive anywhere else – it was not liberating that they got to meet one another in darkened porn theaters and “crypt-like” corners of clubs; it was a necessity if gay men wanted to have any sense of community. Will’s lifestyle reads like such a stereotype of pre-AIDS, 80s gay life that it was useful, after finishing the book, to learn that Hollinghurst had, in fact, been doing something revolutionary by exposing gay life so explicitly: It hadn’t yet been done. I wish I had realized that before going into the book, so as to have felt its originality. Overall, it kept me to the end because of Hollinghurst’s expert word-crafting. The Line of Beauty had Wilde- and Waugh-levels of aesthetic indulgence. Will’s world is one of similar privilege but less glamor, more grit. Here the reader is crammed into steaming, sweat-coated shower stalls and claustrophobic, closed-windowed flats, made bearable only because it is Hollinghurst who traps us there. When the writing is good, even the “empty, empty” places of lost souls become an indulgence and a treat.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2015 by H.
Format: Paperback
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2013 by close reader
Format: Kindle
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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Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2018 by Stephen Culp
Format: Paperback
I'm enjoying reading this book again and again. I find that strange. I am a retired Foreign Service officer who spent most of his adult life processing visa applications in overseas countries. Part of this book is about being an overseas diplomat (from England, though, not the USA) and that appealed to me. But I bought the book completely for its title: "The Swimming Pool Library." I swam in college, way back in the 1960s, and almost made it to the Olympic Trials. And I like books, so the title, "Swimming Pool Library" appealed to me. I'm retired and I was looking for books to fill my library and fill my time. I didn't know it would be about the homosexual lifestyle, and indeed as a straight man with grown children and grandchildren, I didn't have any appeal for that subject. But the book has grabbed a hold of me and I've read it three and a half times in the past two months. I guess retirement does something to the human mind...At any rate, it's good writing and the main character gets into some interesting predicaments and I liked the other parts of the book - the diaries from being a British diplomat in Africa - and the gay thing just has me feeling and thinking things I never felt or thought about before, at least not consciously that I know of. My wife keeps looking at me reading this on the porch but I don't care; if she wants to pick it up and read it herself maybe it would open up some dialog that we should have had decades ago. I love my wife and my children and grandchildren, and I love this book. Buy it. You'll be presently surprised.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2009 by Marco Polo "Bruce"
Good enough, well written, but I preferred his latest. The characters in this one are unsympathetic. And it ends abruptly. Evokes a time and place, though.
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2012 by Shandy W