I’m having a hard time writing a review for Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair. It’s a book that defies easy summarization; even the cover synopsis doesn’t really describe the book I read and probably did more harm than good to my understanding. The story is told in five sections. The first takes place at Oxford during the early 1940’s, with the Blitz in full swing. Two of the characters have a brief affair, giving the book’s title its first meaning. The second section follows one […]
I’m following the whole Sparsholt affair scientifically
I am really glad I went into this novel with no real knowledge of the plot. It made a few of the turns more interesting, and one quite devastating…even though it turned out I was wrong. There are no twists here, though, as happens in life. This novel is on the tail end (maybe) of a renewed interest in WWII, especially the RAF and the Blitz. And this novel picks up right at the beginning, at Oxford, during the Blitz. We begin with the journal […]