The Stranger's Child: Alan Hollinghurst

[poliphilo]

We move through the last century in jumps of ten or twenty years- dropping in on significant moments in the continuing reputation of a minor poet of the First World War. (Hollinghurst- a poet himself- serves up some soupcons of wonderfully convincing fake-Georgian verse.) It's shocking what time does to people. Fascinating how manners change.  Hollinghurst acknowledges the influence of Forster- and maybe this is the sort of book Forster himself would have written if the times had permitted him to be frankly queer.