A new paperback edition of The Stranger’s Child is released today. Michael Amherst reviews the book.
The failure of Alan Hollinghurts’s The Stranger’s Child to make the Booker shortlist has been met with widespread shock. Yet arguably the greater shock is why the book ever received such rave reviews in the first place. The examination of memory; challenging the truth of history and biography, depicting them as shams, created fictions based on the preoccupations of the surviving participants; the impossibility of things enduring – none of this is new. Hollinghurst’s fellow nominee, Julian Barnes, tackles similar themes in The Sense of an Ending, which did make the shortlist, while JM Coetzee and Damon Galgut do the same with their novels Summertime and In a Strange Room, shortlisted in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
Unfortunately for Hollinghurst not only have others addressed these questions but they’ve also done it better.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in