Fact checking: Hey, Gawker? You know I love you, right? And you know how happy I am that you have discovered The Swimming-Pool Library, perhaps my all-time favorite novel. So you know I'm only telling you this out of love: The Line of Beauty is not Hollinghurst's second, it's his fourth.
(Regarding the other two: The Folding Star has some neat stuff in it, but it's set in Belgium; The Spell is kind of mechanical, except for the excellent bureaucrat-on-ecstasy scene. Both, though, are filled with the carefully wrought observations of social behavior, architecture, and anal sex for which Hollinghurst is justly admired.)
1/3/07
