The Spell
  • Published: 2 July 1999
  • ISBN: 9780099276944
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

The Spell

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Jul 1999
EBook
1 Aug 2011
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'A sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue... stylish, original, bizarrely beautiful' - Francis Wyndham, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year


Discover this ‘sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue’ (Telegraph) from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty.

The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin's 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin's ex-boyfriend.

As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life. At once lyrical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists.
  • Published: 2 July 1999
  • ISBN: 9780099276944
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.

Also by Alan Hollinghurst

The Swimming-Pool Library
The Folding Star
See all

Praise for The Spell

The Spell contains the most delicately sensuous portrait-painting...brilliant imagery...and hilarious cross-purpose jokes... Sentence by sentence the novel weaves its magic

Independent

A masterpiece of sustained literary titillation

The Times

Love, lust and loss among a group of middle-class gay Englishmen... Young and old, the town and the country, the wild and respectable: Holinghurst explores each of these uneasy conflicts with wit, generosity and sharply observed comedy

Mail on Sunday

Comic fantasy is grounded in a wealth of sharp observation and psychological insight. Hollinghurst has lost none of his authority

Evening Standard

A bewitchingly beautiful tale... confirms his pre-eminence among the prose writers of his generation

Daily Telegraph

Bewitchingly clever and elegant

Guardian

In its evocation of place, or, more exactly, of places in time, the book is masterful

Geoff Dyer, The Guardian