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The Spell (Paperback)

Format:	Paperback 272 pages

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The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin's 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin's ex-boyfriend. As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life. At once lyrical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists. From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty.

Book details

Published
03/06/1999

Publisher
Vintage

ISBN
9780099276944

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'The Spell contains the most delicately sensuous portrait-painting...brilliant imagery...and hilarious cross-purpose jokes... Sentence by sentence the novel weaves its magic' - Independent. 'Alex is 36, something in the Foreign Office, discreetly gay...his ex-lover Justin invites him to a weekend in the Dorset village of Litton Gambril with his new boyfriend, forty-something architect Robin, and Robin's twenty-two-year-old gay son, Danny. Then Alex drops a tab of ecstasy, provided by young Danny, and embarks on a bewildering voyage of self-discovery in a drug-fuelled London club scene... A masterpiece of sustained literary titillation' - The Times. 'Love, lust and loss among a group of middle-class gay Englishmen... Young and old, the town and the country, the wild and respectable: Holinghurst explores each of these uneasy conflicts with wit, generosity and sharply observed comedy' - Mail on Sunday. 'Comic fantasy is grounded in a wealth of sharp observation and psychological insight. Hollinghurst has lost none of his authority' - Evening Standard

UK Kirkus review

Hollinghurst's novel centres on the lives of four gay men. The characters move between the drug-taking world of the London club scene and a would-be pastoral idyll. This captures perfectly what it is like to be passionately in love, and the fragility of homosexual relationships. Both gently comic and serious. (Kirkus UK)