Editions

Page /
100%
  1. Home
  2. Fiction Books
  3. The Spell
The Spell

The Spell

Discover this ‘sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue’ (Telegraph) from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty.

The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin's 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin's ex-boyfriend.

As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life. At once lyrical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists.

Reviews

  • The Spell contains the most delicately sensuous portrait-painting...brilliant imagery...and hilarious cross-purpose jokes... Sentence by sentence the novel weaves its magic

    Independent

  • A masterpiece of sustained literary titillation

    The Times

  • Love, lust and loss among a group of middle-class gay Englishmen... Young and old, the town and the country, the wild and respectable: Holinghurst explores each of these uneasy conflicts with wit, generosity and sharply observed comedy

    Mail on Sunday

  • A bewitchingly beautiful tale... confirms his pre-eminence among the prose writers of his generation

    Daily Telegraph

  • Comic fantasy is grounded in a wealth of sharp observation and psychological insight. Hollinghurst has lost none of his authority

    Evening Standard

More from this Author

About the Author

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.

Alan Hollinghurst

Read more

/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2021/january/its_a_sin_main-image-1800x1200.jpg

Features

What to read after watching It's A Sin

In his brilliant new series, Russell T Davies brings the real lives behind London's AIDS crisis to the small screen. Here's some novels to consider when you're finished watching.
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2020/october/1980-books-define-main-image-1800x1200 (1).jpg

Recommendations

Books that shaped the 1980s

Rubik's Cubes, Stephen King and Margaret Thatcher – the Eighties have plenty of cultural touchstones. But where to read about them? From Toni Morrison to Tom Wolfe, Alan Hollinghurst to Alice Walker, here are some of the writers who captured the decade best.
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2020/july/reading-remediesmain-image-1800x1200.jpg

Features

Reading Remedy: books to help you deal with unrequited love

From Petrarch to Austen to Nietzsche, literature has answers – in poetry, novels and non-fiction – for the questions of the lonely lover.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies to make our website work. If you click 'Accept All’ we will use cookies to understand how you use our services and to show you personalised advertising and other content. You can change your cookie settings by clicking 'Manage Cookies'. For more information please see our Cookie Policy

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.