Humour is the agenda at the heart of Alan Hollinghurst's very English third novel, The Spell (Chatto, £15.99 in UK). While firmly located in the world of gay relationships, this uncrusading narrative is primarily concerned with the bizarre nature of sexuality, as well as the unintentional comedy of dark power struggles, rivalries and squalid betrayals.
Hollinghurst, Booker shortlisted for The Folding Star (1994), personifies a particular style of English fiction, and here could also be aiming at a camp, contemporary variation of A Midsummer's Night Dream - albeit one set largely in a restored cottage in a Dorset village. The book marks a departure from the first-person voice and determinedly elegiac atmosphere of his two previous works. With this development comes a new relaxation of style, snappily concise scenes and greater narrative freedom. This book is less confessional, less preoccupied with profundity and far less heavy-handed than its predecessors.
All of which makes it possible for Hollinghurst to steer a large cast of spoilt, petulant, rather hopeless individuals through a traditional plot dominated by strong set-pieces and bantering, sexually-based dialogue. Equally entertaining are the casual details, narrative asides and random comments which manage to confer on the novel an unexpectedly real-life dimension. Age, certainly more than love and possibly as much as sex, preoccupies the characters. An architect and father of the 22-year-old Danny, the still handsome Robin is an ageing athlete and former beautiful young man reluctant to relinquish youth. He seems to be winning, just. In order to stave off time, he continues going for runs and has brought his lazy young boyfriend to live in the cottage. Despicable, disloyal and congenitally bored, the lovely Justin is a nastily amusing creature and delivers many of the best lines in the novel.
It is symbolic that Robin's architectural work involves restoring old buildings thus creating an attractive sense of the past. Relentlessly obsessed with being busy, he loves being in control. While Robin cooks, Justin, a would-be actor, preens and bitches about country life, ever on the look-out for opportunities to misbehave.
Into this tense love nest enters Alex, a civil servant and Justin's former lover, who remains broken-hearted about the spilt. "The cottage was low and very pretty and Alex scanned it with an Englishman's nostalgia as well as a tall person's sense of imminent discomfort." As Alex is one of life's victims - he is later described by Robin as being "about nine feet tall . . . rather like a ghost" - he automatically decides his failure to provide such a home for Justin explains the end of their relationship. The irony is, of course, that Justin vacillates between mildly tolerating his surroundings and absolutely resenting them.
Domestic detail is carefully supplied. Alex and Justin move to the kitchen: "They found Robin in running-gear and oven-gloves, knocking the loaves from their hot tins on to a wire rack." Just as Alex and Robin are warily circling each other with Justin enjoying the status of prize, Dan, Robin's son, is introduced. He soon becomes Alex's new obsession.
Throughout the novel Hollinghurst works hard at providing the reader with sharp, precise insights into the private world of his characters. Their small triumphs and deep hurts are carefully examined. Hollinghurst is particularly interested in the pursuit aspects of sex, and Robin's hunting and eventual capture of the unworthy Justin are deftly chronicled. There are many clues scattered throughout the narrative just as several of the secrets are not private. Hollinghurst is constantly stressing both the closed nature of the gay world and also its open, village ethos. Even random minor characters are well known to the central players. Everyone appears to have slept with everyone else. Intimacies are disposable here, as are loyalties.
Much of the novel turns on its multiple ambiguities. It is as difficult to dislike the characters as it is to like them. As the narrative progresses, poor Alex begins to rival Robin as the central figure. He is also more likeable. Robin is the only character with a fully developed past and we see him being slowly swallowed by his awareness of losing control. Meanwhile, the hapless Alex begins to acquire a third dimension, largely through his friendship, "steeped in its own atmosphere of culture and fantasy", with Hugh, an old college friend. The two discuss Danny. " `Is he a scholar?' was Hugh's first, rather off-beam question. Alex said, `Not at all.' `God, you're lucky. I've got this kid after me who just won't let up with the scholarly references and talks non-stop in about ten different languages. He makes me feel as if I'm All Souls College and he's taking a fellowship exam to get into me.' " Their exchanges continue with Alex remarking of Danny: " `He's got a degree in something called cultural studies, which apparently doesn't quite involve reading a book.' "
Class barriers are repeatedly crossed in this society of cruising, casual encounters and "entertainment" drugs, but Hollinghurst does heed class differences. Into his middle-class world he brings the local handyman, Terry, a boy who only asks for payment afterwards. When the bored Justin engineers an encounter with Terry, his expectations are disappointed. Even worse, Terry settles in for small talk. "He really ought to have left, but Justin remembered he [Terry] was a sort of a friend of the family." Later, Justin embarks on a hilarious property hunt through West London.
Hollinghurst does not achieve the compelling artlessness of Edmund White's conversational chronicling of a haunted, hunted way of life. Nor is he aspiring to that here. In this witty, pleasantly urbane, sex-obsessed book he has freed himself of the black agony and claustrophobic agony which has previously dogged him and continues to mark David Leavitt's work. As the novel progresses he seems increasingly at ease, the often offhand humour becomes more confident. Moving between a lopsided pastoral and the sweaty world of London clubs, The Spell is a brisk, clever, very English comedy of sexual manners which is both tested and enhanced by the narrow, specialist nature of its vision. Having invaded Iris Murdoch's territory of Peter Pan sexual obsession, Hollinghurst has injected it with a new lightness of touch and saving humour.
