the 2004 Booker Prize. In 2019, the novel was ranked 38th on The Guardian'''s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Hollinghurst has received praise for his portrayal of life among the privileged governing classes during the early to middle 1980s. The novel has been compared to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, with special regard to Powell's character Nicholas Jenkins. The protagonist has also been likened to Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. James Wood, writing for The New Republic, praised the novel, calling it "an ample and sophisticated delight, charged with hundreds of delicate impressions and insights, and scores of vital and lovely sentences", although he criticized the ending as a "somewhat trite and anachronistic vision of the homosexual as a figure always doomed to be unhoused and exiled from happiness, solitary and lonely, without family or friends, always nostalgic for a bosom that has always, if only secretly, rejected him." Margaret Thatcher's appearance has been compared to that of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Sir Maurice Tipper and his wife have been compared to Evelyn Waugh characters. Television adaptation In 2006, a three-part television adaptation was broadcast by the BBC, and later released on DVD. Dan Stevens plays Nick Guest, with Oliver Coleman as Toby, Alice Krige as Rachel, and Tim McInnerny as Gerald. References External links Video of an interview on The Line of Beauty with Alan Hollinghurst, top right hand corner Review from The Guardian Review from The Telegraph Review from the New York Times Review from the Washington Post Review from the San Francisco Chronicle Review from the Boston Globe Review from the Seattle Times Review from the Christian Science Monitor Review from The Age 'All the Glitters', review in the Oxonian Review'' Fiction set in the 1980s 2004 British novels Novels about bipolar disorder Novels about HIV/AIDS Booker Prize-winning works British novels adapted into television shows Novels by Alan Hollinghurst Novels with gay themes Picador (imprint) books 2000s LGBT novels 2004 LGBT-related literary works