Maggie Maggie Maggie! Out Out Out!!!

Following several months of books focusing on the Holocaust, Islam, and various forms of oppression, we opted for a somewhat lighter read: The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. Sex, drugs, and Tories in Thatcher's Britain! The stately homos of England! Vile social-climbing Oxford graduates, desperate to escape their dreary provincial, middle-class roots! That's more like it! 500 pages of often rambling prose slipped down easily in a little over a week, reminding me of how much I loathed the 1980s and relighting my sense of righteous lefty political ire -- something that's disappeared over the past five years. It brought back memories of joining Youth CND in the wake of the Falklands War, protesting at cuts in education funding, and wearing badges that read "The Tories are the cream of society: rich, thick, and full of clots".

Amusingly, the book was recommended to me by one of the very few Conservatives that I actually know socially, and I'm stunned that he enjoyed it. To me, the book highlights the awful hypocrisy and snobbery of dyed-in-the-wool, semi-aristocratic Conservatives -- the traditional ruling class. Their racism, their avarice, their disdain for new money all get a good outing. One of the funniest moments is when Tory MP Gerald, having scored the coup of having Mrs T herself attend a party at his house, starts panicking about the fact that he has a green front door -- "Maybe she'll think we support the Alliance!" -- and rapidly has it repainted a more loyal deep blue. Mrs T, of course, walks right past; like the Queen, she doesn't notice these things. And if my friend identified with the lead character, well, Nick is a pure parasite, always trying to say and do the right thing to ingratiate himself with the people he's sponging off. It's rare that a book is still enjoyable even when the central character -- I'm loathe to call him the hero -- is utterly vile, but Alan Hollinghurst pulls it off.

Fortuitously for some of the slacker members of our book club, the BBC has chosen to dramatize the novel this month, drawing on the talents of Andrew Davies, who provided us with the lovely Colin Firth diving into ponds in Pride & Prejudice. Al fresco and rather graphic sex on Hampstead Heath is not quite as appealing, and the series fails to capture the sheer awfulness of many of the characters, preferring to rely on a Hits of the 80s soundtrack to establish atmosphere. So much of the book is Nick's observations of the people around him and his unconscious social climbing, which was clearly going to be extremely difficult to translate to the screen. But the boys are nice-looking, the houses attractively grand, and the stone-washed jeans and lacy tights memorably horrid so I'll probably keep watching. But if you haven't read the book, don't judge it by this series. Buy it, read it, and give thanks that Thatcher is just a dim memory rather than a revered statesman.