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564 pages, Hardcover
First published June 27, 2011
One of the best English novels Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - for the two gay men and one innocent girl spending one summer's day in an English estate;I am not a novelist, in fact I haven't really tried writing yet. However, I admired Hollinghurt's The Line of Beauty and I gave it a 4-star rating here on Goodreads. But this book, The Stranger's Child for me seems to be written by him with another Booker as a target. I am not saying that it is not a good objective but it somehow compromised the whole appeal of the book. It's like an artist making a masterpiece statue getting the eyes of Venus, the smile of Mona Lisa, the lips of Angelina Jolie, the behind of Jennifer Lopez, the legs of Britney Spears and the bosom of Paris Hilton.
1989 Booker Winner Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - for the book's main message (my interpretation).
1990 Booker Winner Possession by A. S. Byatt - the poet as a character that unifies -as a backdraft - the whole story that runs through at least two generations;
2001 Booker Shortlisted Atonement by Ian McEwan - for the secret that was kept and revealed later;
2009 Booker Shortlisted The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt - the English family or families that grow from being young or children to adults to grandparents.
Till from the garden and the wildIt is as yet an oblique reference, suggesting how, with death, the love-starved world can fade and alter until it is recognized only by strangers of a later generation. Is this to be the theme of the entire novel? Already I can pick up echoes in the opening section, and sense that it will cast shadows over what is to follow, but can only guess what they will be. The War, I'm sure; Hollinghurst cannot change history. But will he take us there, or leap beyond it? Who will be killed, and who survive? Who will change, what philosophies or ways of life will disappear? And will there be a Stranger's Child? Again, how intriguing not to know, but to be poised on the brink of finding out!
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger's child.