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The Stranger's Child

By Alan Hollinghurst
Series: Picador Collection
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century England, The Stranger's Child follows a summer weekend in 1913 when George Sawle brings his charismatic poet friend Cecil Valance to his family home. The visit deeply affects George's sister Daphne and sets off a century-spanning saga involving a love triangle, family mysteries, and evolving reputations. The novel skilfully explores themes of memory, myth, and the shifts in English culture and society over time.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This novel is ideal for readers who appreciate literary fiction with richly drawn characters, historical depth, and explorations of societal change. Fans of classic British literature and sophisticated narratives will find The Stranger's Child particularly rewarding.

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The No.1 bestseller from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.

The UK number one hardback bestseller from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Sunday Times Novel of the Year
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

A magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.

In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for everyone, but it is on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, and as reputations rise and fall, the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story.

The Stranger's Child is Hollinghurst's masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes. Epic in sweep, it intimately portrays a luminous but changing world and the ways memory — and myth — can be built and broken. It is a powerful and utterly absorbing modern classic.

Series: Picador Collection

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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

The Stranger's Child has been widely acclaimed for its elegance and depth. Critics have praised Alan Hollinghurst as a master storyteller, noting the novel's elegant, seductive style and its sweeping exploration of English social history. It has been compared to Middlemarch for its ambition and achievement. The book is described as a comedy of manners that is both exuberantly funny and utterly absorbing, showcasing Hollinghurst's fineness of perception and confidence in execution.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781035028009

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 19 October 2023

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Picador

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 39.0mm

Width: 131.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 402g

Pages: 576

Collections

Alan Hollinghurst Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Series: Picador Collection

About the Author

Alan Hollinghurst is the author of several novels including The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell, The Line of Beauty and The Stranger's Child. He has received the Somerset Maugham Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the 2004 Man Booker Prize. He lives in London.

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