The Line of Beauty

A New York Times Bestseller

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller

A Book Sense National Bestseller

A Northern California Bestseller

A Sunday Times Bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

And chosen as one of the best books of 2004 by:

Entertainment Weekly • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Newsday • Seattle Times • Salon.com • Boston Globe • New York Sun • Miami Herald • Dallas Morning News • San Jose Mercury News • Publishers Weekly

"In this saga about the Thatcher years Alan Hollinghurst writes harsh but deeply informed social satire from within, just as Proust did. Hollinghurst is never mocking or caricatural but subtly observant and completely participant. He writes the best prose we have today. He brings the eloquence of a George Eliot together with the sexiness and visual acuity of a Nabokov."-Edmund White

"An affecting work of art."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Hollinghurst's prose is a genuine achievement-lavish, poised, sinuously alert… The Line of Beauty is an ample and sophisticated delight, charged with hundreds of delicate impressions and insights, and scores of vital and lovely sentences. It is at once domestic and political, psychological and historical. It is funny, moving, and finally despairing."-New Republic

"His finest novel to date."-Geoff Dyer

"Line for line, Hollinghurst's novel about London during the 1980s is the most exquisitely written book I've read in years. Witty observations about politics, society, and family open like little revelations on every page."-Christian Science Monitor

"A rueful, snapshot-accurate portrait of this era."-Seattle Times

"An intoxicating read…each sentence in this book rings as perfect and true as a Schubert sonata."-Hartford Courant

"[A] masterpiece with a skillfully rendered social panorama, a Proustian alertness to social nuance and a stylistic precision that recalls [James]."-Newsday

"The Line of Beauty is itself a thing of beauty-an elegant and seductive novel…readers will hang on every bracing word. The Line of Beauty may perhaps be the author's most mature and accomplished work to date. It might also be his best."-Philadelphia City Paper

"A deliciously snarky portrait of Thatcherite Britain, but Hollinghurst also makes you believe in his characters, and nobody produced better prose this year."-San Jose Mercury News