The Folding Star (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Alan Hollinghurst
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: Chiefly 1976 and 1992
- Setting: Belgium and England
- Principal Characters: Edward Manners, Luc Altidore, Marcel Echevin, Paul Echevin, Matt “Vim Vermeulen,”, Edgaard Orst, Ralph “Dawn,”
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, World War II, England or English people, Fathers, Wealth, Fascism, Tutors or tutoring
- Locales: England, Belgium
“My life was in a strange way that summer, the last summer of its kind there was ever to be,” says William Beckwith, the spoiled and rakish narrator of Alan Hollinghurst’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988). “I was riding high on sex and self-esteem—it was my time, my belle epoque—but all the while with a faint flicker of calamity, like flames around a photograph, something seen out of the corner of the eye.” It is not only the coming of AIDS that makes the summer of 1983 a turning point for the twenty-five-year-old Beckwith,...
[The entire page is 2308 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
