Starred review from August 19, 2024
Booker winner Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty) traces the divisions of post-Brexit London in this elegant tale of two men’s divergent paths across decades. Dave Win, an aging gay actor, fondly remembers Mark Hadlow, the philanthropist who sponsored his education, after Mark’s death at 94. Hadlow funded Dave’s boarding school scholarship in the 1960s, where Dave was classmates with Mark’s bully son, Giles, now a leading Brexiteer whose own mother calls him an “authoritarian.” In what proves to be a brilliant stroke of misdirection, Hollinghurst suggests in the opening pages that the novel will be Giles’s. Instead, Dave takes center stage, devoting the bulk of his narration to a life well lived, despite homophobic intimidation at school and the racial prejudice he faced during his career, which often saw him typecast in servant roles (he’s half Burmese). He recounts the loving relationship he has with his single mother, Avril, a dressmaker; his success in the theater; and joyful romantic relationships. Neither he nor the reader ever learns the details of Avril’s brief liaison with Dave’s biological father in Burma after WWII, but its mystery charges the pages with melancholic intensity, as do the prejudices Dave faces throughout his life, which define his fate in the wrenching conclusion, when Giles’s vision of the world plays a decisive part. Hollinghurst proves once more to be a master of emotive prose. It’s a tour de force. Agent: Christy Fletcher, UTA.