The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.
Illustrated portrait of Phil

A character in The Swimming-Pool Library

Phil

A shy eighteen-year-old bodybuilder whom Will mistakes for an object of possession.

What they want

Sexual experience and connection on terms he is still learning to choose.

The book

Cover of The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
The Swimming-Pool LibraryAlan Hollinghurst, 1988

Queer freedom in 1980s London meets class, power, loneliness, and the lives that came before it.

View the book

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Phil is an eighteen-year-old adult bodybuilder and hotel employee.

His muscular body attracts Will and Staines, while his manner remains shy and inexperienced.

His later choice reveals a desire Will did not imagine.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • MuscularHis body makes him immediately visible in gym and photographic spaces.
  • Young adultHe is eighteen and less experienced than Will.
  • ShyHis manner differs from the confidence his physique suggests.
  • ObjectifiedWill and Staines treat his body as an aesthetic object.
  • IndependentHe chooses a partner Will did not expect.
  • A lesson for WillHis autonomy punctures Will’s sense of possession.
Whom Phil choosesHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Will discovers Phil having sex with Bill.

The discovery wounds Will’s vanity because Phil’s desire is not organized around him.

If you like The Swimming-Pool Library

Four books that share themes, tone, or setting with this one.

If you like Alan Hollinghurst

Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.

  • Illustrated portrait of Charles Bukowski

    Charles Bukowski

    American poet and novelist of Los Angeles rooming houses, racetracks and the post office, who quit his job to write when a publisher offered him a hundred dollars a month. He came to Paris once, in September 1978, drank his way through a live television book programme and walked off the set — and French television has been replaying it ever since.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Claude McKay

    Claude McKay

    Jamaican-born poet and novelist, and one of the essential writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He arrived in Paris from Moscow in 1923 and stayed in France until 1928, writing Home to Harlem there — and forming a low opinion of the rich, white expatriate scene that dominates most accounts of the period. His Paris is the same years as Hemingway's and almost nothing like it.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Martha Gellhorn

    Martha Gellhorn

    War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.

    View author
Back to The Swimming-Pool Library