Word: brookner
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...Anita Brookner...
...gentle irony rests in the title of this novel, Anita Brookner's 10th, for the lives portrayed in it are anything but brief. Fay Dodworth, the narrator, is approaching 70 at the time she tells her story; her reminiscences are set off after seeing an obituary of Julia Wilberforce, who was nearly 80. Both women had achieved a certain fame when young, Julia as a sophisticated cabaret performer and Fay as a singer of ballads on the BBC. Their friendship did not begin then or, in truth, ever. They were thrown together because both married men who belonged...
Within a few pages, Brookner's devoted fans will feel at home. For this is another exercise in the author's specialty, the weaving of a story that is much longer on atmospherics than plot. Thinking about Julia prompts Fay to begin thinking about herself: "I am a simple woman, and always was." She gave up her singing career to marry; unlike the haughty Julia, who was pushed out of the spotlight by age and changing public tastes in entertainers, Fay has no regrets about her diminished standing in the world. She does wonder why she and her husband were...
...Brookner turns her modest narrator into a figure of considerable strength and poignancy. Fay thinks of her old performances: "Only Make-Believe, runs the song. And You Are My Heart's Desire. And I'll Be Loving You Always. But though the words are affirmative the melodies are in a minor key, and sadder than they know." Life has not passed her by. It has simply not given her enough time to learn how to live...
...sixth novel, is a swift little breeze of a book that buffets the pretensions of critics who condescend to popular art. Richard is a fussy young teacher at an obscure English university who becomes obsessed with an older, well-known woman novelist -- a figure like Muriel Spark or Anita Brookner. But unlike most of the weedy egotists who make convenient satirical heroes, Richard manages to possess his idol, whom he refers to as JL, and even marry...