Henry James smiling smugly from beyond the grave

This year's Booker prize committee must have been a Henry James admiration shadow organization. I am almost finished with the winner, The Line of Beauty and, even though it is not directly about James as was The Master, another nominee, it is clearly a homage. A homage with lots of gay sex.

I am not disputing that The Line of Beauty is a well-written, well-plotted book. It's just like reading James transported to a modern idiom. If I were a James-nut, perhaps I would hold the novel in higher esteem. As it is, of the nominees, Cloud Atlas was by far the richer, more insightful and funnier book. With many fewer descriptions of cocks.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a well-written sex scene, and even a poorly-written one now and again. And I am not a prurient American: I’ll take straight sex, gay sex, weird sex, whatever you want to dish out. But I like it mixed in a bit, not the whole point of the novel.

I exaggerate slightly but I am finding The Line of Beauty rather superficial. I am praying that the main character, Nick Guest, will redeem himself in the final 20 pages but up until now he has just been soaking up the riches of his Tory buddies and external male beauty without a moral compunction, much like another literary Nick, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, passively observes the wealthy and trite. On the dust jacket, Edmund White blurbs that this novel is a "harsh but deeply informed social satire from within." Well, sort of, but in a Jamesian "you are corrupted by your wealth but please hand me some more privilege since, God forbid, I couldn't actually work for a living" kind of way. If one seeks harshness about the Thatcher era, read The Winshaw Legacy. Now that's harsh and hilarious.

Nick, who should serve as my point of entry into this world, annoys me as much as all the Torries Hollinghurst satirizes. The author mentions numerous times Nick’s need for love but doesn’t give the reader any more interesting or revealing backup. I mean, we all need some lovin’, so what makes Nick’s need interesting? His gayness? Whoop-de-doo.