I really wanted to like this book. It's about a hypersexualized handsome haughty Brit who prances about London's upper crust hunting for young prey in the Clubs and gymnasiums and public parks. The writing's honest about the depravities, the elitism, the frivolousness of his life -- and, above all, the gay sex. And that was what I loved about this book: It is an honestly-told awful life, and so much fun to read. As social criticism, it was superb. But there came a point in the book when the main plotline started to loom larger and larger on the horizon, and the old man's diary started to be excerpted in larger and larger word-counts, and the midnight instinct to fall asleep rather than vigorously read starts to weigh larger and larger on the eyelids, when I decided to call it quits. This book is hereby abandoned, but not because it was awful inasmuch as it was starting to go a different direction than I wanted it to, and I have better things to read. ( )

Set in London in 1983, The Swimming-Pool Library centres the promiscuous lifestyle of homosexual Will Beckwith, an aristocratic young man, who spends his days idling and picking up other gay men. When, one day,he saves the life of Charles Nantwich, an octogenarian peer, a friendship develops. When he was much younger Lord Nantwich served in the foreign service in Africa and he gives Will his old diaries in the hope that he will write his biography.

As Will reads through the diaries we discover that, despite the 60 year age difference, there are many parallels between the lives of the two men. Both come from privileged backgrounds, led self-indulgent lifestyles spent pursuing young men for casual sex with both showing a preference for black men. However, whilst Nantwich was forced to conceal his sexual preferences Will lives in a society that not only tolerates homosexuality but also one that must conceal any prejudices it may still retain.

The similarity of the two characters’ youth can certainly be read as a comment on the ruling class where a colonial sense of entitlement especially towards ethnic minorities, even if inadvertent, means that changes to habits and attitudes are slow to materialise.

Extracts from Lord Nantwich’s diary, with its depictions of repressed homosexuality, breaks up the main narrative which is liberally peppered with graphic sex scenes. Yet a sense of loneliness pervades the book, many of the characters live solitary existences, interspersed by wild, but ultimately meaningless sexual encounters.

There is undoubtedly a certain elegance to the prose but overall the plot felt meandering and aimless. Will seems incapable of questioning let alone altering his lifestyle no matter what befalls him. In truth, the novel felt over-sexed to the point of tedium and the sexual interludes seem to serve no purpose other than to show the increasingly liberal attitudes of both the reading public and society in general has become. Although admittedly this may be because today we are armed with the knowledge of the AIDS epidemic that occurred only a few years after this book was set. The book is populated almost exclusively by promiscuous homosexual men meaning that overall this felt like a celebration of a gay sub-culture, but little more. On more than one occasion I was tempted to throw in the towel and give up but persevered in the hope that it would come to some conclusion only to be ultimately left sadly disappointed. ( )

I'm quitting this. It's well written, but, having put it down to read something else, I feel no inclination to pick it up again. The first sentence of the Goodreads blurb says it all.

When you know nothing about a book but pick it up because it has the word "library in the title...

(Ok, so I'm slowly working my way through the 1001 books to read before you die and I would have gotten around to it sooner or later, but still...)

Very well written. But ultimately not at all my cup of tea. ( )

While not literally read so, this came on the heels of 'Dancer from the Dance' for me, and I'm afraid it suffered in comparison. 'The Swimming-Pool Library' is set in a similar time and has a majority of homosexual characters, but by all other standards the two shouldn't be compared so. The style and tone of the two are much different. Likely because Hollinghurst writes of the world not during its zenith but looks back at it wistfully.

The author differs with me, but the hedonistic world William revels in is far too icky for me to be comfortable reading about. The clear, limpid prose only highlights the discomfort. I can set a lot of things aside, and some authors can even get me to see the value of this level of debauchery...but not this one. The plot of the novel eventually brings the aristocratic William Beckwith to a moral dilemma that doesn't deal with who he's fucking at the moment. Hollinghurst seems to point towards a change of character, a discovery of moral fiber, but it seems to me to be a triumph of his laziness. It is very easy to do the right thing when the right thing is doing nothing.

I liked the book enough while reading, but when pressed to say why, I can only say it was elegant. ( )