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The Pain and Joy of "The Spell"

© Dennis Cox

Justin is a licentious, grandiose boor, but no matter; he has an elegant wit, good taste in furniture and clothes, and is a sexual Sybarite. Therefore he has no shortage of lovers. His current lover is Robin, a wealthy architect who caters to younger Jason as a diffident househusband. Robin would love to spend the rest of his life with Justin but the rub is that their sex life is past tense. Allan Hollinghurst opens his novel, “The Spell’” with a weekend visit to Jason and Robin’s English country manor by Alex, Justin’s most previous lover. Alex has been invited because it is Justin’s insouciant and luxuriant philosophy that everyone should be able to get along. Of course, Alex is frustrated by wistful thoughts of what-might-have-been and Robin tolerates him with a reticent urbanity. Jaded Justin, the apex of this perfervid triangle, just smiles and enjoys the breathless attention surrounding him. “The Spell” is truly a comedy of manners depicting torrid emotions and passions always simmering below a very well bred British unctuous demeanor. Reminiscent of Henry James, where the gentleman replaces his teacup on the saucer only to signal worlds about to collide, Hollinghurst assuredly examines fragile alliances which are about to implode. Enter Danny: the provocative twenty –two year old son of Robin. Although definitely a spontaneous and playful colt, he is nonetheless mature enough to take the role of educator for the starchy Alex. Alex is the most sympathetic and benign of all Hollinghurst’s characters. He is much too timid to be a lecher and too guileless to deliberately shatter Justin’s construct of worship. Depressed Alex is not motivated merely by a desire to forget Justin nor a libidinous urge to exploit young flesh. Though beautiful, Danny’s spell on Alex is his charming enthusiasm for life, albeit heightened by tabs of ecstasy.

For his first time, at Danny’s instigation, virgin-to-drugs Alex experiments with hallucinatory, rapturous narcotics. The result: he finds himself talking joyously to strangers that previously he would wait for “ten years for an introduction in writing.” More significantly, Alex begins to observe the “inside of life, rather than the outside.” Alex exults in dropping his formal, crusty façade (and so do we!). The depiction of the night club euphoria, the house music, the tribal dancing, the scintillation of gorgeous dancing bodies makes us feel giddy, it lightens the otherwise lugubrious tone of this book. Also, we can laugh when with caustic irony the author mordantly describes Alex naively pondering on how to get on the good side of his “father-in-law”.

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