Lines of beauty

Well, you've prolly guessed it.

I'm reading the Line of Beauty today, and will be posting lines that I like.

Here goes:

'Nick, in his secret innocence, felt a certain respect for her experience with men: to have so many failures required a high rate of preliminary success.'

'Sometimes when he was nervous he asked questions to which he would rather not have known the answers.'

'He loved the hard confidence of his date; and at the same time, in his silent, superior way, he thought he heard how each little brag was the outward denial of an inner doubt.'

'Nick looked down and mumbled, "Do you have to get back?" He tried to smile but he knew his face was stiff with sudden anxiety. He moved his wet glass in circles on the rough-sawn table top. When he glanced up again he found Leo was gazing at him sceptically, one eyebrow arched.'

'He thought he saw the point of kissing but also its limitations - it was an instinct, a means of expression, of mouthing a passion but not of satisfying it.'

'"Look, I''ll see you, my friend," Leo said, as Nick opened the gate. They came out a bit shiftily on to the street, and Nick couldn't tell if the sentence really meant its opposite.'

'"As a teenager, then," Gerald said, "Tobias a) believed that Enoch Powell was a socialist, b) set fire to a volume of Hobbes, and c) had a large and mysterious overdraft. When it came to Oxford, a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics was the irresistible choice."'

'He wondered if he could have a crush on this waiter too - it only needed a couple of sightings, the current mood of frustration, and a single half-conscious decision, and the boy's shape would be stamped on his mind and make his pulse race whenever he appeared.'

'Pot was a kind of truth drug for him - with a twist. He had an urge to tell, and show himself as a functioning sexual being, but as he did so he seemed to hear how odd and unseen his life was, and added easy touches to it, that made it more shapely and normal.'

Gosh, this book is difficult reading. Not just because it's a thick fat book and introduces tonnes of characters in it (i.e. people with name memory problems would probably hate the book). It's mainly the style I think that could put one off.

Indeed, style!

Nick, in the book, (at least initially) aimed to study 'style as an obstacle' and 'style that hides things and reveals things at the same time' at UCL.

I am not sure whether I like the style yet. I might like it because it's difficult.

But what I do really really like are the little gems of sentences scattered around, such as those above, that so illuminate stuff.

I think I might just LOVE this book.

*swoons*