Good grief … I’m desperately attempting to check in and actually post something during the school holidays. In my own defence I must say I have been away for most of them. By the way, having read Chris’s bit on the Matakana Farmers Market, (scroll down to Farmyard Blues) I disagree, and will go so far as to say I reckon it’s a bloke thing.

The produce was simply divine, and if there was a small proliferation of Gucci sunglasses and Audis and those black Mercedes SUVs in the carpark, well, obviously it’s quite close to Omaha… listen, it was a crisp and gusty autumn day and the purpose-built macrocarpa stalls glowed with glorious autumn colours; piles of red, gold and orange capsicums rubbing glossy shoulders with matt mounds of feijoas; dark chocolate and Cointreau cigars snuggling up to homemade lime curd; organic blueberry ice-cream canoodling creamily with er … the ultimate mussel fritter? Anyway, this is not a food show.

Moving on, I did manage to finish The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (soon to be appearing at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival) while the kids were attempting to kill themselves on the kiwiana rope swing under the pohutakawa.

Well, what a storm in a teacup. The rampant gay sex novel, I mean, vicar. All reasonably tasteful and discreet I thought. It would go down quite well with Gerald Allen in Alabama, actually, bless him. In fact, I have a feeling he’d enjoy rather more of it than he’d like to let on.

I however was much more interested in Mr Hollinghurst’s piercing, ruthlessly accurate rendering of human behaviour: both as social animals and all alone at the edge of death, he has us nailed like beetles on pins. He even gets mileage out of clearing of throats – here, talking about Thatcher:

Wani somehow got people to look at him, and said, ‘People say that but you know, I’ve always seen a very different side of her. An immensely kind woman …’; he let them see him searching a fund of heart-warming anecdote, but then said discreetly, ‘She takes such extraordinary pains to help those she … cares about.’
Maurice Tipper expressed both respect and resentment in a dark throat-clearing, and Gerald said, ‘Of course you know her as a family friend,’ smiling resolutely as he conceded to Wani the thing, so clearly seen, that he hankered for himself.
‘Well …’ said Wani, ‘yes…!’

It’s brilliant, makes me think of Nabokov, but it lacks that gentling edge given by the tolerance and, yes, love of people that the Vlad had, and Saul Bellow too. You get the impression that Hollinghurst doesn’t really care that much about any of his characters and in fact, his hero ends up getting shafted in almost every way imaginable. A friend said he thought this might be due to the setting – the eighties in Tory London was hardly a caring, sharing environment.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked it very much, raced through it. And having implied it is cold, it actually then went and made me blub. Business-like asides about the horrors of the AIDS-ravaged community and its once sleek and beautiful members made my own London memories of dear friends long gone crack and lurch:

… they seemed to congratulate him, but what they felt was the knobs of his spine through the wool of his suit… He commanded attention now by pity and respect as he once had by beauty and charm… Nick thought he still looked wonderful in a way, though to admit was to make an unbearable comparison. He was twenty-five years old.

God. But it’s true, you only remember the good times … the good times however, came and went, and from a historical angle – chronicling the rise and fall of the eighties – the book is really fascinating. My experience of Thatcherite London was probably similar in some ways to Nick’s (except that I’m female and straight) but always from the left angle. Margaret Thatcher being reverentially referred to by people as ‘The Lady’, in conjunction with remarks about the heavenly blue of her eyes, didn’t really happen round my gaff.

The charmed life young Nick lives, as long-term house-guest of a Tory Minister (or Monster, as his brilliantly, endearingly mad daughter Catherine calls him) I glimpsed from time to time, but only really imagined fleetingly from my rather ramshackle shared house in Islington. So it’s great to vicariously roll around in the cocaine-dusted money-frenzied excesses of eighties London in delighted revulsion.

Yes. A superbly honed writer with a gift for observation, and well deserving of his Booker. Can’t wait to see him at the Festival … got your tickets yet?