What’s keeping Stephen Boylan up at night month?

It’s 13 years since Alan Hollinghurst carried off the Booker Prize for his ’80s-set gay classic The Line of Beauty, beating out both Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Mitchell’s epic Cloud Atlas. October sees the publication of Hollinghurst’s sixth novel, The Sparsholt Affair, another multi-generational novel in the vein of 2011’s superb The Stranger’s Child.

Split into five parts, the book opens with a memoir by Freddie Green, a student at Oxford during the darkest depths of World War II. Green’s intimate circle of friends is shaken with the arrival of David Sparsholt, a handsome athlete waiting out his time at the college until he can join the Royal Air Force. Sparsholt quickly becomes a focus of attention for the tight-knit group.

Nobody is ever quite who they seem; Green makes a regular trip to Blenheim Palace, alongside Sparsholt’s girlfriend, to work with the Secret Service, while the question of where Sparsholt’s passions truly lie remains nicely foggy.

The book moves forward to its primary focus, Johnny Sparsholt, David’s son. We first encounter him as a lovelorn baby gay, obsessed with the horny French exchange student sharing his bedroom for the summer. When a scandal involving his father, the affair of the title, hits the family, it casts a pall over Johnny (and the family’s name) that he can never fully escape.

Less successful, less privileged, and seemingly less fun than everyone else, Johnny meanders through his sexual awakening in the 1970s. His power (and our interest in him) comes from his family story which is never fully articulated – the affair, and what exactly happened, is held tantalisingly out of reach, though its debilitating impact on the Sparsholts, and society as a whole, seems similar to that of the Profumo scandal in 1961.

The book gathers pace again towards the end and, as you’d expect, the writing is absolutely flawless. Ultimately the book is let down by Johnny; I’ve no doubt a more interesting and engaged protagonist would have given this the extra impetus needed to truly make this one affair to remember.

If you like this, you might also like…

The Well of Loneliness

by Radclyffe Hall (Penguin Modern Classics)

Terri Blanche’s brilliant book-buying anecdote in the recent A Different Country documentary prompted me to revisit Radclyffe Hall’s classic The Well of Loneliness. Originally published in 1928, the novel follows the journey of lesbian writer Stephen Gordon from her well-to-do upbringing to her life in Paris, as she tries to find her place as an ‘invert’ in the world. It must have been a real thrill as a young gay woman to not only get your hands on a copy of The Well of Loneliness, but to discover it’s also a bloody good read.

As Music and Splendour

by Kate O’Brien (Penguin)

Another historical novel I recommend revisiting this month is Kate O’Brien’s As Music and Splendour. Rose Lennane and Clare Halvey are sent from Ireland to the continent to train as opera singers. The women are quick to shake off the confines and values of their strict Catholic upbringing; Rose has affairs with a number of different men, while Clare begins a passionate relationship with a fellow student, Luisa. O’Brien has undergone a renaissance in recent times, and is finally starting to get the recognition she deserves as one of Ireland’s most accomplished and courageous writers.