The Folding Star
| File:TheFoldingStar.jpg First edition | |
| Author | Alan Hollinghurst |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 19 May 1994 |
| Publication place | Great Britain |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7011-5913-9 |
The Folding Star is a 1994 novel by Alan Hollinghurst.
Plot summary
Many of the characters (Manners, Orst, Marcel's father, Luc) are marked by obsession with others. The past continually intrudes into the twilight world Hollinghurst evokes, dragging Manners back to England for a time. Two major characters, both objects of romantic obsession, mysteriously disappear. The long-lost Jane Byron, beloved model for Orst, had swum out to sea at Ostend, Belgium, decades ago and was never seen again, leaving the artist with a lifelong obsession for painting her image. The beautiful youth Luc, obsessive love interest of the protagonist Manners, also disappears. In the book's enigmatic conclusion, Luc is last seen looking out from one of many photographs of missing children on a glass-fronted bulletin board at the beach in Ostend. Thus, like Byron, he ultimately ends up existing only within a frame, and his disappearance is poetically linked to the "shiftless" North Sea waves at the famous beach.
Title
The "Folding Star" is an obscure name for the evening star, referenced in Milton and Wordsworth, which indicates to a shepherd the time to bring sheep safely into a sheep-fold.
Reception
The Folding Star won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1994. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Peter Kemp, chief fiction reviewer of The Times Literary Supplement,[1] said, "Even in its sexiest moments, it never loses its intellectual poise. Dry witticisms intersperse sweaty couplings."[2]
References
- ↑ Royal Society of Literature, Peter Kemp, 'Reviewing Literary Fiction', April 2013. Archived 2013-04-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "BBC News | Entertainment | Hollinghurst's rise to Booker glory". 19 October 2004. Archived from the original on 22 July 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2007.