-
“Masterful…Few novels so skillfully revealed
what’s really said behind polite facades, and The Stranger’s Child displays that talent on a broader canvas…The
brilliance of The Stranger’s Child is
in how it reveals the ways bad blood and secrets muck with history. When
everybody strains to say the appropriate thing, the facts suffer. That theme is
perfectly suited for Hollinghurst, who can reveal a host of hidden messages in
the simplest utterance (or pursed lips)…Psychologically penetrating…Brilliant.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
-
“Perfect…Hollinghurst writes so carefully and
subversively, often with one eyebrow raised in sardonic amusement as he
satirizes the excesses of his mostly high-born protagonists.”
— Financial Times
-
“Erudite, stylish, very amusing…There is a
poignancy and a humor that is far from conventional, and a sense of an ending
that outlasts the comforts of closure.”
— Bookforum
-
“Magnificent…insightful. Hollinghurst explores
how a living, breathing existence can become a biographical subject riddled with
omissions and distortions…Hollinghurst divides the novel into five
novella-length sections, in each of [which] he demonstrates his knack for
conjuring the moments between events, the seeming down time in which the
ramifications of turning points in life sort themselves out. His immersion in
each period is fluid and free of false notes, collectively fusing into a single
symphonic epic…[A] beautifully written, brilliantly observed, and masterfully
orchestrated novel.”
— Seattle Times
-
“With the prewar ambiance of Atonement, the manor-house mystique of Gosford Park, and the palpable sexual
tension of Hollinghurst’s own The Line of
Beauty, this generously paced, thoroughly satisfying novel will gladden the
hearts of Anglophile readers.”
— Library Journal
-
“Delightful…In Hollinghurst’s eagerly awaited
new novel we see that if history is written by the winners, biography belongs
to the survivors…Tremendously readable and engrossing.”
— Daily Mail (London)
-
“At once classically literary and delightfully,
subversively modern…The Stranger’s Child
is easily [Hollinghurst’s] most subtle and most ambitious novel. Hollinghurst
is a master observer of human and social behavior. As told in five sections
spanning nearly a century, The Stranger's Child uses the mode to startling,
marvelous effect, as his characters grow old and perish while the fractured,
uncertain memories of each remain—for future inhabitants to debate and unearth.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
-
“Lives tangle and untangle in a literate,
literary mystery at the heart of World War I by Man Booker Prize winner
Hollinghurst…How do we know the truth about anyone’s life? [This] carefully
written, philosophically charged novel invites us to consider that question.”
— Kirkus Reviews
-
“[Hollinghurst] writes like Henry James, but
without the obfuscation; his gorgeous sentences home in on the delicate nuances
of human relationships but don’t sacrifice the larger social canvas along the
way.”
— Chicago Tribune
-
“Daring…Hollinghurst’s fine new book, The Stranger’s Child—the closest thing
he has written to an old-fashioned chronicle novel—contains a whole hidden
literary curriculum, out of which he has fashioned something fresh and vital.”
— New York Times Book Review