Book Log 2012 #32: The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

In 1913, George Sawle brings a friend from Cambridge home for a visit. That friend, Cecil Valance, would memorialize that visit in a poem that would become famous after Valance dies in World War I. And while generations grow up learning this poem, there's an underlying mystery to it - is the romantic relationship in the poem a reference to George's sister, or is it in reference to George himself? The legacy of the poem, and the lives of George and his sister, Daphne, spin out over the rest of the novel, which is set in five sections spanning 1913 to 2008.

To be honest, the mystery of the poem is overstated, even in the paragraph above. I don't think there's much of a mystery for the reader to sort out, so it's more looking to see how, over time, people touched by the poem and by its possible subjects remember Valance and his work. There are other major themes as well - the changing fortunes of aristocrats and the rich, the way age and time plays havoc with memory, and perhaps most notably the radical changes in what it meant to be gay in Britain during the 20th and early 21st centuries.

What didn't work so well for Solar works better here, I think because the time jumps are large enough that the author just had to pick things up anew without trying to explain what happened in the intervening years. Enough of those details come to light during the course of the section to fill in the reader but not overwhelm.

It's not the easiest read for a commute - it requires more time to read and reflect - and may occasionally be too knowingly literary - but I wound up liking it more than I expected.