Books
by Anita Brookner
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Hotel du Lac |
Single, thirty-nine year old Edith Hope has disgraced herself in the eyes of everyone she knows by not showing up for her own wedding. On the run, she flees to Switzerland and to the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac, where she hopes to regain her composure before returning home. This is a well-written novel, witheringly funny and keenly observant. I loved it . . . as did the judges who awarded it the Booker Prize.
(Sharron Calkins - bwl 114 Autumn 2024) |
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The Bay of Angels |
Zoë's mother, an early widow, is one of those women who never worked and Zoë, despite a university degree, is not very successful in her professional or social life; so what's going to happen to mother and daughter? In fact nothing much, but the book makes us ask: what makes life worthwhile? What is an interesting, happy or full life? And that's where the interest of the book lies.
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 8 April 2001) |
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The Bay of Angels |
Densely written, quietly introspective, as are all her novels, Brookner spins a web of charm and sadness with a few characters, despite their singularity and loneliness, defining a crowded world. Zoe relates her life from the 1940s to the present, lived partly in dim London flats and the brilliance of Nice. She speculates on where she has found happiness, if any, and concludes that . . . well, read it and find out!
(Joan Jackson - bwl 25 August 2004) |
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