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In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old
Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home
of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald,
his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby—whom
Nick had idolized at Oxford—and Catherine, highly critical
of her family's assumptions and ambitions.
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent
in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered
by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two
vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black
clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the
dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty,
a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and
riches among his friends. Richly textured, emotionally charged,
disarmingly comic, this is a major work by one of our finest
writers.
Alan Hollinghurst is the author of three novels, The
Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, and The
Spell. He lives in London.
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