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The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

Picador $120

The first gay novel to win the  Man Booker Prize in its 36-year history is about Nick Guest, a young homosexual who  stays with the family of Gerald Fedden, a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's  government. Nick falls in love with the Feddens' lifestyle of luxury and privilege. He sees himself as part of the family and fails to realise that he's just being used as a minder for  the manic-depressive daughter.  Nick has two lovers: Leo, a  black man he meets for sex through a personal ad; and Wani Ouradi, a  Lebanese heir to a  fortune. Nick and Wani plan to start a  company and art magazine, though the pair are  more interested in watching pornography, having threesomes with waiters and snorting cocaine. The characters glide aimlessly through the shallow world of wealth, their complacency only vaguely threatened by Aids and the rest of the 1980s.



The Line of Beauty