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Anita Brookner
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Hotel du Lac
Winner of the Booker Prize 'The Hotel du Lac was a dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era' Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating loneliness is renewed . . . 'A classic . . . a book which will be read with pleasure a hundred years from now' Spectator 'A smashing love story. It is very romantic. It is also humorous, witty, touching and formidably clever' The Times 'Hotel du Lac is written with a beautiful grave formality, and it catches at the heart' Observer 'Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding' Hilary Mantel, Guardian 'She is one of the great writers of contemporary fiction' Literary Review
Brief Lives
Brookner again shows herself to be the consummate observer of social nuance in this deeply felt chronicle of an unlikely friendship between the flamboyant, ego-centric Julia and modest, self-effacing Fay, the narrator. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership and by their sharing of a guilty secret, these two women form an intense and intimate bond that highlights their uneasy compromises with each other -- and with life itself.
Latecomers
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. The latecomers are Hartmann and Fibich, brought over to England as children to escape Nazi Germany, now living close to each other in London in their 60s, and still friends. Yet they could not be more different, each having adopted different strategies to reconcile themselves with their past and to cope with an uncertain world.
A Misalliance
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 mutual friends disagree. In fact, Blanche has come to be regarded as undeniably eccentric--making elliptical remarks that no one knows how to read, and chatting at great length about characters in fiction. She resolutely fills her unwanted hours with activities, maintaining her excellent appearance, drinking increasingly more wine, and, in an attempt to turn her energy to good works, becoming severely enmeshed in the life of a disordered young family.
Misreading Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner was known for writing boring books about lonely, single women. Misreading Anita Brookner unlocks the mysteries of the Brookner heroine by creating entirely new ways to read six Brookner novels. Drawing on diverse intertextual sources, Peta Mayer illustrates how Brookner's solitary twentieth-century women can also be seen as variations of queer nineteenth-century male artist archetypes.
Look At Me
'Once a thing is known it can never be unknown.' By day Frances Hinton works in a medical library, by night she haunts the room of a West London mansion flat. Everything changes, however, when she is adopted by charming Nick and his dazzling wife Alix. They draw her into their tight circle of friends. Suddenly, Frances' life is full and ripe with new engagements. But too late, Frances realises that she may be only a play thing, to be picked up and discarded once used. And that just one act in defiance of Alix's wishes could see her lose everything . . .
A Start in Life
Anita Brookner's first novel, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.' Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment. Yet in revisiting her London upbringing, her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs, she wonders if perhaps there might not be a chance for a new start in life . . .
Leaving Home
Emma Roberts leaves home for the first time in her twenties, travelling to Paris to study seventeenth-century garden design. There, she meets vivacious Françoise Desnoyers and is quickly drawn into her passionate and complicated world. But Françoise's demands - deceiving her formidable mother over a love affair - leave Emma feeling exposed and vulnerable, and yearning for the safety and comfort of her London home. Yet when an unexpected family tragedy turns that life upside down, Emma comes to realize the impossibility of returning to a home you have already left behind...
Strangers
Paul Sturgis is a retired banker manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers: the cheerful Australian girl who cuts his hair, the lady at the drycleaners. His only relative, and only acquaintance, is a widowed cousin by marriage � herself a virtual stranger � to whom he pays ritualistic visits on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to make sense of his current solitary state, and fearing that his destiny may be to die among strangers, Sturgis trawls through memories of his failed relationships and finds himself longing for companionship, or at the very least a conversation. But then a chance encounter with a stranger � a recently divorced and demanding younger woman � shakes up his routine and when an old girlfriend appears on the scene, Sturgis is forced to make a decision about how (and with whom) he wants to spend the rest of his days�
