There was a problem loading your book clubs. In Alan Hollinghurst's debut novel, The Swimming-Pool Library, Will, a promiscuous, self-absorbed layabout, finds his upper-class world both shaken and stirred after he saves the life of an elderly gay aristocrat in a public lavatory. On the train, Will cruises a young man whom he takes home; they engage in sexual intercourse. Also, at Charles Nantwich's home there is a room that has served as a library and was once a Roman bath. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. For Will, the Swimming-Pool Library is slang for the changing-room to which he and his friends would slip in the middle of the night for illicit sexual activities. From the diaries, Will learns that Nantwich has been to Egypt and then returned to London, where he met with Ronald Firbank: an extraordinary portrait of effete decrepitude, camp and alcoholic. His lover is a "school tart" grown old; a kept man drinking too much. A literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. Meanwhile, Will's teenage black boyfriend, Arthur, a recent refugee from the drug-related violence of public housing, has disappeared without a trace so that's one more thing occupying Will's mind, if not his time. Trapped in close confinement with Arthur, Will begins to resent him. James believes that Will is wasting his intelligence and his literary skill and urges him to write Charles's biography. Will applies artificial respiration and saves the man's life. On the train home, Will reads Valmouth, a novel by Ronald Firbank, given to him by his best friend, James. The Swimming Pool Library. Will returns to Staines's home with Nantwich. James is a hard-working doctor who is insecure and sexually frustrated as a gay man. Will talks on the phone with Gavin, his brother in law. Refusing to make a commitment, Will agrees to research Nantwich's life through the man's diaries and many years worth of letters, and then come to a decison. So, I could even have lived with the soft porn effect and kept reading because of the literary skill, but, ultimately, not only are almost all the characters unlikable, the narrator is completely self centered and wildly unsympathetic. As the 25-year old's friendship with the elder man develops, Will finds it difficult to concentrate much on research; he's much too busy cruising the showers at the clubby gym where he swims, partying with best (and only?) His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. The Swimming-Pool Library focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and Lord Nantwich, an elderly man searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions. Charles's diaries have entered the Second World War; he is entering middle-age and the tone is melancholy. Please try again. Will goes to an exhibition of photographs by Staines. As a straight man I endeavored to give all the gay sexuality the same distance I gave the sexuality of "straight" characters whose taste differs from mine--cf. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. He is surprised to find Gavin there. Staines poses Phil bare-chested and oiled, as pornography. His biography for him gay existence are all built on a foundation of homosexual persecution, an elder statesman a, 2019 sexual novice Item on Amazon man with whom he takes home ; they engage in sexual intercourse Swimming-Pool. 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