If Henry James could brave one more curtain call, he'd find a more encouraging audience than the one that booed him off stage after "Guy Domville." James has become something of a literary rock star this year. He's the subject of fictional biographies by two of the British Isles' most prominent writers, Colm Tóibin and David Lodge. And his spirit hovers all over last week's Man Booker Prize winner, "The Line of Beauty," by Alan Hollinghurst. Can the reality TV show - "Serve Tea to Henry" - be far behind?

Despite its glacial pacing and cerebral themes, Tóibin's novel, "The Master," climbed onto the American bestseller list for a few weeks this summer, looking a little uncomfortable next to Janet Evanovich's "Ten Big Ones" and Plum Sykes's "Bergdorf Blondes." The Booker Prize ($90,000) will propel "The Line of Beauty" up the list too, as it's already done in England, and that popular exposure will be interesting to evaluate.

Line for line, Hollinghurst's novel about London during the 1980s is the most exquisitely written book I've read in years. Witty observations about politics, society, and family open like little revelations on every page.

But it's also an explicitly gay novel. Not just a novel with some gay characters, comfortably on the side or reduced to floppy antics, à la "Will and Grace." Hollinghurst rarely strays far from his protagonist's sexual fantasies and exploits. British papers have noted that this is the first gay novel to win the Booker Prize in its 36-year history. (So much for their cosmopolitan sophistication: America's National Book Award went to an equally explicit gay book way back in 1992, an autobiography called "Becoming a Man.")

Some critics have played up the novel's political and social satire, and those elements are certainly there and brilliant, but I wonder if it's squeamishness or political correctness that keeps them from stating that this is primarily a story about gay sexuality and it contains scenes that many readers will find deeply offensive.

The novel opens in 1983 when Nick Guest, a graduate student pursuing a PhD on Henry James, moves in with the Feddens, an upper-class family in London's Notting Hill. Nick is an old Oxford chum of the family's oblivious son, and he's become the unofficial caretaker of their dangerously depressed daughter. The parents are wealthy conservatives who want to be perfectly clear that they have no objection to Nick's orientation, particularly if it remains entirely theoretical.

Nick, however, is ready to move beyond that, and the first section of the novel details his first date, an assignation with a black man he meets for sex through a personal ad. Their relationship deepens into something more meaningful, drawing Nick into the working-class life of his lover even while he floats into the lavish lifestyle of his host family: As a member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, Mr. Fedden gives Nick access to the highest level of British politics, and Mrs. Fedden comes from a family of people who exchange Gauguins as gifts.

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