Word: brookner
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Dates: during 1985-1985
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...Anita Brookner's smartly written novels sell briskly in England, where the author lectures on neoclassicism and the Romantic movement at London's Courtauld Institute. She is definitely not a romantic. Providence, Look at Me and Hotel du Lac (1984 winner of Britain's Booker Prize) take dim views of grand passion. Says the heroine of Hotel du Lac, a successful author of romances, "The facts of life are much too terrible to go into my kind of fiction." The narrator of Look at Me takes this sentiment to the extreme: "It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget...
...Brookner re-creates the world of the immigrant high bourgeoisie with convincing selectivity. Its style and manners are indistinguishably British, with only a hint that the Dorns, apparently Jewish, belong to a community within a community. The characters are defined largely through their social behavior. Sofka: "A shy woman, virtuous and retiring, caring only for her % children, but determined to fulfil her role as duenna, as figurehead, as matriarch. This means presentation, panache, purpose and, in their train, dignity and responsibility; awesome concepts, borne permanently in mind." Alfred: "If he translates his predicament into fiction, if he views...
Despite these clinical assessments, the Dorns command affection and sympathy. Where some might find pretensions and cool blood, Brookner sees form and responsibilities: Sofka the young widow forfeiting romance to direct her family's fortunes, "like a general on the evening of a great campaign," Alfred shelving his cherished books for the life of an industrialist ("His character . . . will be a burden to him rather than an asset. But that is the way with good characters...
...Brookner's unmistakable moral tone is never overbearing, largely because it comes wrapped in an elegant irony. But there is also her refined literary instinct, which understands fiction's obligation to define values and render discriminations and judgments. This she does in clear, astringent prose, even though the London Dorns seem oddly disconnected and unaffected by events leading up to and including World War II. Where, for example, is the Blitz, the shortages, the concern for relations left behind on the Continent? At their hotel in Bordighera, Frederick and his wife welcome soldiers under any flag who are willing...
...important battles of Family and Friends are fought over love, and in this arena Brookner is shrewd enough to know that the Geneva convention does not apply. "The rules are really crude," she said in a recent issue of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. "The rules are: Who dares, wins. This is bad news for people who don't dare and who see others win. That's the central problem, I think. I think it's the matter nobody gets completely right." Not in life, perhaps; but this art historian who dared write novels has found the solution in literature...