The Folding Star
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Folding Star |
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| Author: | Alan Hollinghurst |
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| Publisher: | Vintage Books USA |
Condemned to a mounting but incommunicable obsession with the boy, Edward becomes involved in affairs with two other men: one a heartless but seductive fraud, the other a young drifter with a deeply possessive streak. Then Edward is introduced to the world of the enigmatic and reclusive Symbolist painter Edgard Orst. Gradually he is drawn toward an understanding of the artist’s own obsession with a famous actress, drowned off Ostend at the turn of the century, and of the ambiguous circumstances of Orst’s own death under Nazi occupation.
The events of The Folding Star are played out amid the silent streets and canals of a city that seems locked in the past, and across the northern landscape of out-of-season resorts and abandoned houses that lies beyond. But in the central panel of the novel’s triptych Edward returns home for a funeral and is caught up in memories of his own late adolescence and his first love affair: an English pastoral already threatened by the experience of betrayal and loss.
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Reviews
Barnes and Noble
Obsessed with one of his pupils & involved in two unsatisfying homosexual affairs, English teacher Edward Manners returns home for a funeral & gets caught up in memories of his own late adolescence & his first love. From the author of The Swimming Pool Library.
