By maybe a quarter or a third of the way through it, it still hasn't started moving. She's showing the inside of the mind of this narrator, Paul Sturgis, and how empty his life is, including his inner life. So when this woman, 20 years his junior, shows up in his life, she provides all this men...
In Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner brilliantly evokes the origins, nature, and consequences of human isolation. As middle age settles upon the Sharpe sisters, regret over chances not taken casts a shadow over their contented existence. Beatrice, a talented if uninspired pianist, gives up performin...
After twenty years of marriage Blanche Vernon is alone; abandoned by her husband Bertie for a childishly demanding computer expert named Mousie. While Blanche finds this turn of events baffling, she feels that Bertie must have left her because of her overly sensible demeanor. Yet many of their mu...
A disturbing book that was at the same time a pleasure to read. We begin when Edith Hope commences her stay at the Hotel du Lac, a luxury hotel, prideful of the fact that it is the place people go when they need a deep rest. Brookner's prose perfectly encapsulates the mood as Edith stands befor...
As I continue to read Anita Brookner's books, I find increased admiration and awe for her skill and precision in her writing. Her language use is elegant and the depth of her character development is succinct and dramatic."Incedents in the Rue Laugier" is an absorbing study of a group of people, ...
If you have not read Anita Brookner this is a wonderful novel with which to start. I daresay you will not look back as you traverse some of her many (too numerous to count) novels of romance and the social difficulties of young women - and sometimes not so young - in love. In this one the protag...
Miss Brookner has a very good hand at writing; it is clear from each paragraph that she can apply language in very detailed and orderly ways. This book is much like her others, focusing on loneliness, other's happiness over one's own, trying to move on or somewhere else. She has very mundane acti...
Un po' sotto tono per gli standard della Brookner, forse perché contrariamente al suo solito questa è una specie di saga familiare (normalmente i romanzi della Brookner si concentrano in modo ossessivo sulla protagonista).La famiglia Dorn è di origine tedesca ed ebraica (credo, e dico credo perch...
In A Closed Eye, Anita Brookner explores, with compassionate insight and stylistic brilliance, the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.In Harriers gallant st...
I wasn't going to review this one, but having finished listening a few minutes ago, I've changed my mind.A reviewer has stated that if the protagonist, Fay, were to attend a costume party, she'd attend as a Question Mark by default. I agree; her life so identified with being a wife (and widow), t...
This is my fourth Brookner and it won’t be my last. There’s been no logic to my selection, just whatever one happens to come my way, and it’s pretty easy to see why those who like her really like her but also why her detractors accuse her of simply writing the same book over and over. Her palate ...
I have become rather a fan of Anita Brookner although of the 24 novels she has written this is only the eleventh I have read. I love the mood she creates with her writing, the lonely suburbia, damp evening London streets, the senses of quiet isolation and life slipping by unremarked. Her books ar...
It's become a cliche to call Anita Brookner the modern Henry James, but with her latest novel, she's outdone the fusty old master. Some future genius will have to be called the modern Anita Brookner."The Bay of Angels," her 20th elegant novel, perfects an examination of loneliness that threatened...
"He wondered if it were healthy, or desirable, to be thinking of the past just now when he should be thinking of the future." (p 209)George Bland has lead a quiet, safe, correct life. On retirement his is abandoned by his long-time friend, Michael Putnam, through Putnam's sudden death. Bland has ...
In one of her most delicate and suspenseful novels to date, Anita Brookner brings us an exquisite story of friendship and duty. Rachel Kennedy and Oscar Livingston were not precisely friends or family. Rachel had been acquanted with Oscar for some time, first as her father’s accountant, and then ...
In her superbly accomplished new novel, Anita Brookner proves that she is our mast profound observer of women's lives, posing questions about feminine identity and desire with a stylishness that conveys an almost sensual pleasure.From the moment Jane Manning first meets her aunt Dolly, she is bot...
When the café was closed they were the only two people in the house, a fact which bothered neither of them. Naturally they had got to know each other during the time that they had lived in such close proximity, but Eileen Bateman seemed entirely self-sufficient and had proved herself to be an exc...
I had letters to write, yet my handwriting wandered about on the page, no longer obedient to my intentions. I saw this as an omen, prelude to a larger disintegration that might already be under way. When I looked in the mirror my reflection showed a creature with dull eyes and a pursed mouth. I w...
The morning was spent doing the filing, which had rather got left on one side. Mrs Halloran fought a losing battle over the piles of material she insisted on keeping around her like an entrenchment, and then, when I took it away from her, reached into her bag and produced a bottle of ginger wine ...
Even in September the central heating was on, and with the curtains half pulled to keep the sun out the effect was of entering a seraglio. George, who had taken to driving Mrs Jacobs home from the shop, was pleased with what he saw although he knew it to be in faintly bad taste; this, if anything...
By a pleasing coincidence my partner, Brian Smith, is the grandson of the original Smith: we are thus the true inheritors of the firm of Sherwood Smith, founded nearly one hundred years ago. We have our offices in Gloucester Place and we pride ourselves on our effectiveness, although the premises...
Even though she knew that Henry was dead she was not quite convinced of the fact. Her heart beat heavily in the dark room while she sought to make sense of the noise that had woken her. Her inability to do so alarmed her, as did the torpor that kept her half sitting in the bed, although it would ...