The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

This book is a bildungsroman of sorts of Nick Guest, a young gay man who spends the 1980s living in London at the wealthy, conservative, and political active family of a college friend of his. The book is a comedy of manners that exposes the emptiness not only of Nick's life but also of his friends and the people in his social milieu. As personal and political disaster close in on Nick and his household, he's left with the memory of the various lines of beauty (of someone's body, architectural, or even lines of cocaine) that he's experienced, but not much hope for the future. I found this book to be an extremely compelling read: the plot moves forward organically and the prose is beautifully styled. Winner of the 2004 Booker Prize.