The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst's novel of a young postgraduate student's adventures is set in London during the high tide of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Professor John Mullan was pleased to point out that Hollinghurst's protagonist, Nick Guest, is imagined as a student at his own college, UCL, where he has made the novel a set text.
Mullan said that he had been struck by how his students reacted very strongly to Nick Guest, but often in very contradictory ways. Hollinghurst – who agreed that his character divided readers (including one close friend of his who had hated him from a few pages in) – declared himself pleased at this ambivalent reception, as he did not wish his characters to be wholly loveable or dislikeable.
In a similar fashion, he said, he was keen to leave the novel's ending indeterminate.
