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The Stranger’s Child

by Alan Hollinghurst (2011)

The narrative opens in the year before the Great War with two Cambridge undergraduates who dabble in ideas, gay sex and poetry. A country house, Corley Court, is central. The war smashes up old England, and kills one of the lovers. Time moves on through the Second World War. Houses last, but serving new generations differently. Alan Hollinghurst’s title is from Tennyson’s memorial poem for his Cambridge friend (and probably more than friend) Arthur Hallam. The idea, as pondered in the novel, is that the most important things in your life will matter less to you and yours than to the unknown, unknowing stranger’s child who comes long after you. The densely