My least favourite Alan Hollinghurst book. It's about a bunch of highly punchable characters moving back and forth between the country and the city and falling in love, etc. The lack of architecture to describe impacts negatively on Hollinhurst's writing, as does the lack of plot. None of the characters seem to grow or develop, they just move around. ( )

It felt unfinished, as though Hollinghurst got bored with it and decided just to wrap it up and send it off to publisher. Point of view is third person limited, but it shifts among too many characters, with sufficient attention given to none, with the effect that all the characters end up seeming superficial: we're shown just enough of their motivations to make them realistic, but not enough to make them complex. The characters all seemed like gay male stereotypes. Possibly would have been a better novel if Hollinghurst had focused on just one of the four main characters. ( )

An intriguing and nuanced depiction of relationships and flings for gay men in England. I still prefer Hollinghurst's later works, but this is better than The Folding Star. ( )

As is typical to Hollinghurst novels, there was no surprise that the characters in The Spell were all posh, eternally horny, gay English men. Whilst this definitely runs as a strong thread in the weave of his other novels, mostly they still have an alternate plot line of sorts that carries the story.

In The Spell the gay scene itself was the plot line, or at least that part of the scene that involves an older man / younger man dynamic. Hollinghurst writes with introspection around the draw of the fun, hedonistic younger guys to the older men who think they've found nirvana only to break their hearts over the inevitable transience of the relationships. In many ways I suppose it's not dissimilar to the classic heterosexual relationship disaster of women who go for the 'bad boys' and then sob with incredulity when they turn out not to be husband material. Both moths to a flame. Possibly more sex involved in the former.

There was a lot more shagging in this novel than in some of his other titles. And I mean a lot of shagging. If someone wasn't at it every few pages they were primed and ready to be at it. Hollinghurst evidently wanted to write a novel that was squarely about the 1990s London gay scene of clubbing, drugs and promiscuous sex with strangers in toilet cubicles / park bushes, etc., and the trickiness of trying to keep monogamous relationships going when there were so many strangers in toilet cubicles / park bushes, etc. to be having sex with.

Having a very good friend of old who was having a gay old time (pardon the pun) doing exactly that in 1990s London (the promiscuous bit - not so hot on the relationship side), I get that Hollinghurst depicts the London gay scene very well in this novel. However, for me it wasn't enough of a plot line to carry the rest of the novel. The younger characters were intolerably selfish and self-absorbed (so far, so accurate when I think back to my friend during that period), and the older characters were desperately annoying doorsteps. Their relationships therefore left me a bit cold, and perhaps I was too heterosexual for all the shagging but after a while I just wished they'd give it a rest for 5 minutes and watch a bit of tele and drink some cocoa.

However, having said all that, although Hollinghurst's novels can often be imperfect (sometimes I find I lose interest a bit when his plots meander), he's a very, very fine writer at a prose level, and I find myself drawn back to his novels time and time again like... well, a moth to a flame.

3.5 stars - with more plot beyond the shagging this could have been a very fine novel, but sadly this novel was as superficial as the relationships it described. An extra half star for the consistently fine writing, though. ( )

I enjoyed this book, but if you really want to read an excellent one by him, read _The Swimming Pool Library_. This is just a minor excursion compared to that -- though it shines as a farce. ( )