The Stranger's Child is a compelling read, superbly constructed around five episodes taking place at key moments of social, cultural and personal transition, loss or recollection in the lives of characters connected directly and indirectly over a span of 90 years. I had my doubts at the outset, 1913 upper middle class England, thinking, did not Virginia Woolf get there first and better? But I hadn't grasped the point. As we move from each carefully constructed, beautifully written scene to the next the novel's scope expands and diversifies and yet the individuality of the human stories at the heart of the novel don't get lost. As the novel's driving force - Alfred Hitchcock invented the idea of the McGuffin to describe the force that propels the narrative, like the Grail in a Grail quest - Cecil Valance, the handsome, lost war poet, recedes from view Alan Hollinghurst opens up a fascinating and entertaining examination of loss, memory, secrets and lies, artistic endeavour and changing tastes, reputation, social status, mores and change. And if all that makes the novel sound dry and literary that only tells you I'm not a very good critic.
Much more accomplished reviews of a fine novel are available here in The New York Times and here (as you might expect) in The Guardian.
