When reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty you could stop on any page and be met with a chorus of beautiful sentences, each word hitting the exact right notes. Much like the novel’s protagonist, Nick Guest, the reader is put under a spell and drawn into a world of many beautiful things. As the saying goes however beauty is only skin deep. The first part of the novel sees Nick, a fresh-faced Oxford graduate, moving into the house of his friend Toby Fedden. This new beginning holds the joys and excitement of many firsts for Nick as he loses his virginity, falls in love and starts to shed his naive adolescent self. The second part sees Nick less interested in romance and more in the pursuit of pleasure as he becomes more deeply intertwined with the lives of the Fedden family. The final part acts as the comedown from the party as the beauty begins to fade and the characters are forced to reckon with the truth. While often passive and shallow you still leave the novel aching for Nick as if he were your best friend. He is utterly seduced by the upper-class, glamour of the Feddens and by the time he realises this it is far too late. In many ways the reader takes this journey alongside him as the intoxicating prose draws you in only later to reveal the darkness beneath.