I enjoyed "Hotel" so much that I looked into what else Brookner has written and found a lot of intriguing titles. I just finished "Fraud," which is about a woman having a genteel midlife crisis when the mother she cared for all her life dies. She disappears, and the novel is mostly from her acquaintances' perspectives on what she was like and where she might have gone. It was pretty good, slower-paced than "Hotel," and all of the characters had what I guess I'd call "mother issues" (like the Puseys), with the exception of one truly loathsome daddy's girl. (At one point I confess I thought each of these characters might just benefit from adopting a dog.)
Anyway, after I sit down with "Postman," this weekend, I think I'll pick up "The Debut" by Brookner. Here's the premise:
"Since childhood Ruth Weiss has been escaping from life into books, and from the hothouse attentions of her tyrannical and eccentric parents into the gentler warmth of lovers and friends. Now Dr. Weiss, at forty, a quiet scholar devoted to the study of Balzac, is convinced that her life has been ruined by literature, and that once again she must make a new start in life."
Ruined by literature! Hehe!
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1 comment:
Hehe. Sounds wonderful. Ruined by literature. That reminds me of all the worries expressed in Jane Austen novels that too much novel reading has "insalubrious" effects on the health of young women! They get full of notions and passions and whatnot and become quite unmanageable!
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