How long is it?
448 pages in the Bloomsbury Publishing 2005 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
The Line of Beauty
Highly regardedBooker Prize, 2004Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 56 / 100High
- Length
- 448 pagesBloomsbury Publishing · 2005
- Reading time
- 9 hat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 4 / 5
About 9 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 18 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In 1983, Oxford graduate Nick Guest moves into his friend Toby’s family home in Notting Hill, where Toby’s father is a newly elected Conservative MP. Nick is drawn to their wealth and beautiful possessions, though his place in the household remains precarious. His relationships with Leo, a Black council worker, and Wani, a wealthy Lebanese man, take him into different worlds of gay London as the Thatcher boom gathers pace and AIDS threatens his circle.
Reader notes
Elegant, dryly funny and leisurely, the novel dwells on parties, conversations and small social humiliations, all filtered through Nick’s susceptibility to beauty and privilege. The close observation asks for more patience than the plot’s momentum; sex between adult men is explicit, and cocaine use recurs.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Lyrical · Ornate · Witty
- Tone
- Melancholic · Reflective · Satirical · Wistful
- Structure
- Linear
- Driven by
- Character · Ideas · Relationships
- Point of view
- Third person, limited
- Setting
- Britain, principally Notting Hill, London
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Art and creativity
- Class
- Love
- Mortality
- Politics and ideology
- Sexuality
Content notes
- Violence
- None
- Sexual content
- Strong
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Strong
- Abuse
- Mild
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Booker Prize, 2004
- Stonewall Book Award honor, 2005
- Lambda Literary Awards finalist, 2005
- Costa/Whitbread Award shortlist, 2004
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Bloomsbury Publishing · 2005 · Paperback. ISBN 9781582346106.
How long does it take to read The Line of Beauty?
About 9 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 448-page Bloomsbury Publishing edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer, and translator whose fiction helped bring gay lives into the literary mainstream. His novels place desire within social structures, tracing how class, wealth, secrecy, and inherited power shape intimate relationships. Descriptive and lyrical, his prose often uses wit and satire to test the polished manners of privileged worlds. His narratives develop through looking, recollection, and partial disclosure: in The Swimming Pool Library, a biographical commission connects contemporary sexual freedom to histories of empire, race, and concealment, while The Folding Star examines the fantasies that gather around beauty and the unattainable. The Line of Beauty brings these concerns into the politics and affluence of 1980s Britain, where private desire unfolds amid social evasions and the emerging AIDS crisis.
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Edition and details
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publication year
- 2005
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 448
- ISBN
- 9781582346106
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2004
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Literary fiction · Psychological fiction · Social novel · Satire
- Editions
- 16
- Languages
- 5 (German, English, Spanish, Russian, Unspecified)