The Sparsholt Affair

Author: Hollinghurst, Alan

Edition: 1st Edition

Format: Deckle Edge

Number Of Pages: 432

Details:

“Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst.” —EsquireFrom the winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades as it plumbs the complex relationships of a remarkable family.   In 1940, David Sparsholt arrives at Oxford to study engineering, though his sights are set on joining the Royal Air Force. Handsome, athletic, charismatic, he is unaware of his powerful effect on others—especially on Evert Dax, the lonely and romantic son of a celebrated novelist who is destined to become a writer himself. With the world at war, and the Blitz raging in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: a place of fleeting beauty, of secret liaisons under the cover of blackouts. A friendship develops between David and Evert that will influence their lives for decades to come.   Alan Hollinghurst's sweeping new novel evokes across three generations the intimate relationships of a group of friends brought together by art, literature, and love.  We witness shifts in taste and morality through a series of vividly rendered episodes: a Sparsholt holiday in Cornwall; eccentric gatherings at the Dax family home; the adventures of David's son Johnny, a painter in 1970s London. Richly observed, emotionally charged, this dazzling novel of fathers and sons, of family and legacy, explores the social and sexual revolutions of the past century, even as it takes us straight to the heart of our current age.

Reviews:

“ Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire  

“Beautiful; moving . . . A complex saga that takes us, in long leaps, from the Blitz to the age of smartphones. Hollinghurst writes classically beautiful prose: constantly intelligent, alert and mobile. Hollinghurst achieves [a] symphonic effect . . . he writes with subtlety and sympathy; wisdom and understanding.” —Adam Kirsch, The New York Times Book Review  

“Alluring, virtuosic, cinematic. . . Hollinghurst wonderfully conveys the charged atmosphere of ordinary life rumbling under extraordinary circumstances. The traditional novel form seems as pleasurable and humanly true as ever in his hands.”  —Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker

“Satisfying . . . At the heart of  The Sparsholt Affair are volatile secrets that can never be riddled into the light.”  —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“Utterly captivating and immersive . . . Hollinghurst remains one of our most gifted writers, unspooling sentences as precise and lyrical, deft and ingenious, as any in the English language.”  —Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe

“Absorbing . . . displays a masterly grasp of psychological processes and a prickling awareness of minute betrayals and inarticulate desires. When Hollinghurst picks up an aspect of human experience, he is so exacting that it’s as if no one has described these things before.”  —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Hollinghurst is a superb writer. Like Henry James, he writes prose so dense with lines of beauty that you can’t quite catch up to them in real time, lines that are razor close to human experience and yet

— or therefore — retain a continual capacity for surprise. In 

The Sparsholt Affair, he has made it his project to describe the agonizingly long time it took for gay life to reach its present state of encumbered but unprecedented freedom . . . [The novel is] sad in the clear-eyed lonely fashion of Philip Larkin. Undeniably the work of a master. . . There’s nothing Hollinghurst could write that I wouldn’t read.”  —Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune

“Fascinating, magisterial . . . It captures the nuanced textures of life.  Hollinghurst is a literary master.”  —John Powers,

“Fresh Air,” NPR

“Epic, elegant, intricately constructed. An overarching theme of  The Sparsholt Affair is the quest for love. Chance, temptation, time, los...

EAN: 9781101874561

Release Date: 13-03-2018

Languages: English

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Hardcover Used - Like New Ships fast! 20181st Edition

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Hardcover