Books like The Folding Star

Boy, am I SOO enchanted with this elusive Mr. Hollinghurst! Although “The Folding Star” is definitely weaker and less “literary” than the rest (“Swimming-Pool Library,” “The Line of Beauty”), it still has that tight and elegant mechanical heart which impels the modern reader to want to just sit down to read it, badly (I myself had to actively hunt the book down: I got the original U.S. first edition for 99 cents on Ebay). Yes, this is the least best in his enviable oeuvre—but it happens to have the raunchiest scenes, the most explicit, the most inciting (!!!) Hollinghurst’s vocabulary is mad impressive, like reading a Victorian novel where all the characters become entangled/infatuated with others, all who happen to be men—the smuttiest of events are portrayed beautifully, with all details exquisite. It's like a youthful “Death in Venice”, with tragedy less present than wit (although aging IS a theme). No one else can write like this, or can depend on the gay world so profoundly for authenticity and plot; to bring out the poetry so implicit in cruisin’ European streets, in meeting young, eager lads who have but one thought uniting them in an almost-religious fervor is not an easy feat.This is as if Henry James & Tom of Finland ever got together & had a joyous, gay old time…Books like these are super hard to come by (trust me, I know). Invaluable. Always extraordinary in their originality and always wicked fun.