There is no line of dialogue that he does not hear there is no event that he does not witness. He detects the intimations of a whole social history.Įverything in The Line of Beauty is filtered through Nick's consciousness. It is that "indefinable air", to which Nick attaches experiences of which he actually knows nothing.
That sentence is characteristic not because of its subject – the mannerisms of the ruling class – but because of its phrasing. Lord Kessler's easy grandeur intrigues Nick. Here is a typical sentence from Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty: "He ate his salmon and drank his rather sweet hock with an indefinable air of relished routine, an admission of lifelong lunching in boardrooms and country houses and festival restaurants all over Europe." This is Lord Kessler, brother-in-law of Tory MP Gerald Fedden, in whose Victorian stately home Hollinghurst's protagonist, Nick Guest, is having "an exquisite light lunch" with the rest of the Fedden family.
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