the line of beauty

my sudden tour of the thatcher kingdom that is canary wharf, combined with the upcoming Booker of Booker award (celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize) led me to pick up a copy of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.
I had been aware of the book for some time. it was a regular sellar at the book shop as well as a staff favourite, but it was only now i managed to pick up a copy and read it. on the one hand, i regret that i waited so long to enjoy this masterpiece, but on the other hand, maybe it is better. I can appreciate it all the more now within my current setting here in the City.
Many people have labelled the book "gay fiction" or a "gay romance" but i find these labels absurd. yes the protagonist is gay.....and? sure, there are plenty of gay sex scenes, but i fail to see how this makes the book worth button holing in such a fashion. if it needs classification, i would put it as a brilliant social satire, or even a historical memory of Thatcher's London, in the same way that Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanieties is a brilliant documentary of Reagan's United States.
It begins in the summer of 1983 "the last summer of its kind there was ever to be." Young and impressionable Nick (an ultimately middle class boy) moves to london and stays with his friend's parents. the father is a palpably ambitious tory MP, determined to impress the Prime Minister (or The Lady as she is generally refered to). Nick is given a front row seat to the happenings and pretensions of the time.
And what a ruthless decade the 80s was....and a self satisfied one too, for some. with a keen eye for social nuance, Hollinghurst recreates this universe with almost scary accuracy. it is all there: the bankers and their coke addiction, the self important Tory MPs who declare "the 80s are going on forever" as 3.5 british citizens are without jobs and mines are closing all over the north, the Diana hair cuts, AIDS, and Every Breath You Take.
Nick is and is not part of this world, and in such a way is the perfect observor, close enough to comment accurately but still reflective. A PhD student at UCL, he is obsessed by aesthetic beauty which he pursues relentlessly amist a world of ultimately philistine Tories who seem to see art exclusively as a symbol or social advancement. Intrigued by Hogarth's Line of Beauty, he attempts to create an artistic world together with his millionaire Lebanese lover. So, yes there is a gay love story, but it is the personalities of the characters that intrigue me. I was just old enough to remember these times, and i recognise too well some of the types: the vulgar businessman turned millionaire by creating an empire, but still remains the crude entrepreneur, the disatisfied who are always lurking beneath the shiny surface. it reminds me of the parties i attended at the time: the posh tory parents who drank too much and disappeared to the bath room to cut lines with their platenum credit cards, leaving us (the kids) to lounge bored around the pool. i remember all to clearly the time my classmate (we were about 11 or 12) took the keys to his dad's Mercedes.....and drove it into a lake....he swam out through the window. the parents grounded him for 2 weeks, and bought another Mercedes.
a vulgar and excessive time.