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summer; Lines of Beauty
2005-06-13 - 11:30 a.m. Hmnmm. I feel like I should update this thing, but somehow I've been so busy, and now I feel like I have nothing to say. Well -- School is almost over. Usually I am so relieved, but with this summer we are moving into new territory. Maddy is mostly hanging out at home this week (although she's supposed to go help out at the barn at some point, which I should check into.) Nora's still got finals, and is signed up for a Spanish class, but she doesn't quite know about that yet, and I think it's going to be tricky. So I'm not looking forward to that, or the fact that she'll have tons of free time. Sigh. Maybe it will really be great. It already feels very summery. It's also kind of new experience to be spending more summery unorganized time at home. We usually do that at my mom's house in MA. Then there's my stepfather's illness, and the fact that my mother-in-law is moving out of her house of 20 years and back to Pittsburgh. It's all just a little unsettled. But hopefully we can work in some summer things to do around here. That is my goal. Maybe trips to the beach. Maybe a backpacking trip. Things like that. In other news, I finished Lines of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, and am now reading Snow, by someone named something like Orhan Pamut. I really really liked Lines of Beauty but I'm not quite sure why. The protagonist is a very smart young gay guy, Nick Guest, who has just graduated and is now in graduate school to write about Henry James and Style. (I'm just realizing we never quite hear what his dissertation is supposed to be about.) He goes to live with the parents of a friend from school. They're quite rich, live in London, and the father is an MP. It's during the time of Thatcher. The friendship is not quite a friendship -- he's sort of in love with the friend, although we're not sure the friend knows it. He's almost more in love with the idea of the friend -- he's beautiful and rich and not particularly deep. But decent. It's beautifully written. Nick is not entirely sympathetic. It's not clear, for instance, why he wants to keep living with these people, or why he hooks up with one of his lovers. I think that's the point of the book, actually -- he's sort of attracted to the rich, but they don't quite really accept him. It's very sparely written, by which I mean it's episodic. You hear about something, and then it's over and you're three years later in time. You have to guess what happened in the interval. It's very good. I think I've got to get Anne to read it. Okay -- I've got to go.
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