I haven’t posted anything for two weeks… I know, two weeks is a long time. What have I been doing in these two weeks you may ask? Visiting my sister and her fiancé in Brooklyn, working, getting settled in our new house, and reading. That’s right, this one took me two full weeks to read.
Book Read: The Sparsholt Affair
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Number of Books Read: 25
This another “Emily went to the library at lunch and picked up a book.” I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to expect. The description inside the cover intrigued me, Hollinghurst has won awards, I was short on time and this one was available. Don’t get me wrong, while this book took me two weeks to read, it wasn’t a bad one. In fact it was incredibly well written. But it was long.
The Sparsholt Affair follows David Sparsholt through his early (and few) days at Oxford, and how he made a lasting impression on some of the other men there, particularly Evert Dax, who he will encounter again. The book then follows Sparsholt’s son throughout his life, from a crush on a young French man as a young teen to his first meeting with Evert and those associated with him, and finally through his journey through fatherhood and middle-age.
Jonathan, a painter, grew up through a scandal involving his father – not only a business scandal, but a personal one at the same time. His father, who had a few “encounters” with other men, acts oddly about Jonathan being gay. When Jonathan spends decades with his partner, David still cannot ask how Pat actually is doing. For decades, Jonathan and his father never see eye to eye.
Throughout the novel, the connection between David and Evert becomes apparent. When Jonathan is hired to re-do a painting for Evert, he begins down the path of friendships, discovery and acceptance, both of himself and who is father might have been.
From eccentric parties at the Dax home, a daughter who embraces her not-so-normal (especially in the 1970s) family, to deaths that effect Jonathan forever, and a new friend who might give 60-something year old Jonathan a new outlook just when he needed it.
Spanning seven decades, Hollinghurst writes of struggles, becoming true with oneself, and revealing secrets of the people you may have never known anything about. This novel is observation of a world that was struggling to accept change, how people embraced it, and the sexual revolutions of the past century.
While this one took a while to read, I’m glad I picked it up that stormy, rainy day at the library. Hollingshurst way of writing makes you want to keep reading even when you don’t feel like it. If you have some time to dig into a pretty well-written book, pick up this one and give it a go. Or pick up another one of Hollinghurst’s. He’s award winning and acclaimed. Worth a shot.
Next Read: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
