More by Brookner

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!

Another favorite moment

I really liked this exchange between Edith and Monica. I also think it's kind of telling about Edith.

Edith spots Monica in a shop "wolfing down a large slice of chocolate cake." She goes in.

"Well," said Edith, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "Any plans for the day?"

"Do me a favour, Edith," replied the other. "I am not feeling particularly bright this morning and I do not have any plans. I never have any plans. I should have thought that was fairly obvious by now. I thought you were supposed to be a writer. Aren't you supposed to be good at observing human nature, or something? I only ask because you sometimes strike me as being a bit thick."

Then Monica stabs her cigarette into an ashtray "and left it there to smoulder."

Isn't that bodaciously sassy?

Next pick

It's kind of long, and we have some holidays coming up, so we'll shoot for Jan. 3, but just let me know if we need a little extra time.

Mother and men

Edith says that she is like her mother "in the only way she valued: we both preferred men to women." Why do you think she included all that background about her sad childhood and her strange, distant mother? And why did she make distinctions between men and women like that?

True romance

How, or did, Edith's fiction parallel her reality? Did you get the feeling one influenced the other or would do so in the future? Could she go back to writing happy endings after her stay at Hotel du Lac?

Jennifer Pusey

Who WAS this chick? What was she supposed to be about? Oh — and what happened with that incident with the bellboy? Did he stumble upon Jennifer and Mr. Neville, or what was the fracas, exactly?

Mr. Neville

One of the things I liked about Mr. Neville — indeed, all of "Hotel du Lac's" characters — was their ambiguous shading. Are we dealing with someone with good or bad intent, kindness, selfishness? Mr. Neville seemed politely honest, keenly perceptive and appeared, to the near the end of the story, to have Edith's "best interests" at heart. What did you think of him? In any case, despite his surprise failing at the end, I liked how he wasn't a cardboard caricature of the man waiting in the wings.

Edith and David

What did you make of their affair, and what was David's culpability, if you will? I harbored an idea that he really actually loved her but that he was passive in his own right (the family commitments and whatnot), so the understanding that this could only be an affair was sort of how he proceeded. But I might have felt the romance from Edith's point of view and missed the more objective clues.

The scene where she recounts how she watches him interact with his wife and her realization they would make love that night was, I thought, one of the more poignant moments. The emotional pain of being the other woman seemed palpable.

And what of her sending him a telegram at the end that she's coming back. A happy ending? A fool's paradise?

The places we'd go

I have this childlike pleasure in what I guess I’d call resort fiction – like a civilized desert island of charming amenities and quirky characters. Hotel du Lac sounded so marvelous – not a high and narrow bed and veal-colored curtains, mind you, but so many other details: “Its furnishings, although austere, were of excellent quality, its linen spotless, its service impeccable.” Also: “There was no sauna, no hairdresser, and certainly no glass cases displaying items of jewelry.” And a bar where drinking was discouraged! Hehe.

I’m trying to think of other books with this sort of escapist thrill. There’s Agatha Christie’s “At Bertram’s Hotel,” not one of her better stories but all about a fine and old-fashioned hotel of a bygone era with two pages dedicated to a high tea that might tempt you to change your citizenship. Of course there’s Something Going On there, or there’d just be the tea. Or even “The Shining,” creepy though it is, giving over to the hotel as really its own character dwarfing the main players. (I would really love to visit the Overlook Hotel some summer; wouldn’t that be a fine road trip?)

Do any fictional or real-life travel tales bring back fond memories for you? Did anything from Hotel du Lac tickle your fancy?

The places we’d rather not go

Then there’s Hotel du Lac as a sort of rest home for the shady or cast-off well-to-do – I love that! “In this way the hotel was known as a place which was unlikely to attract unfavorable attention, a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued. Its name and situation figured in the card indexes of those whose business it is to know such things. Certain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it … Those families who benefit from the periodic absence of one of their more troublesome members treasured it.”

And yet that seemed to cast such an air of melancholy about the place, for all the participants to basically recognize they were society’s damaged goods for one reason or another. You know, they may deserve their own posts, but that common factor changed my perception of each character – to see the inhabitants as more fragile and pitiable save for Mr. Neville and his predatory and perceptive dealings.

Exile

I wrestled with the complexity of Edith’s retreat to Hotel du Lac and how much was suggested, ordered or self-imposed, made all the more elusive by the fact Edith’s “indiscretion” – leaving her groom at the altar – wasn’t revealed until at least two-thirds through the book. Her docility seemed part of finding her life unbearable – she couldn’t be alone, couldn’t sustain her affair on its terms, couldn’t settle for a companion like Geoffrey – and she couldn’t bear to be at home, but she couldn’t bear to be away. So what part of exile was her own will and what part was that suggestive nature of hers to do what others wished – that was one of the more satisfying components of the story. Would she grow up, find herself or what have you was so much more of the tale than whether she reunited with her lover.

A time and a place

What did you initially make of the setting of “Hotel du Lac”? It felt English, or Continental, to me right out the gate, but I struggled with getting the time period in my head. Some of it was the very un-American customs: tea in the salon, dress for dinner, like glamorous travel of a bygone era. But more so there was this premise that Edith was in a social exile and that the notion of a woman of scandal being sent away seems so antiquated. Like reading in an Edith Wharton or Shirley Jackson story of a young woman visiting a faraway relative for precisely ninth months and nobody says a word. The copyright date was ’84, and the clothing brands fit with that, but the story almost seemed timeless, like it could have harkened back 40 years or more.

For November: 'Hotel du Lac'

A Booker Prize winner in 1984 by Anita Brookner. It is borderline novella-length, so it should be a fast read. How about for Nov. 25? It will give me and kc something to mess with during our Thanksgiving shift!

From Wikipedia:
"Romantic novelist Edith Hope is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, where her friends have advised her to retreat following an unfortunate incident. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.

"Edith reaches Hotel du Lac in a state of bewildered confusion at the turn of events in her life. A secret and often lonely affair with a married man and an aborted marriage later, she is banished by her friends, who advise her to go on "probation" so as to "grow up," and "be a woman," atoning for her mistakes.

"Edith comes to the hotel swearing not to change. The silent charms of the hotel and her observations of the guests there all tug at Edith with questions of her identity, forcing her to examine who she is and what she has been."

Sex and the Country

I read on Wikipedia that Carrie from "Sex and the City" is shown reading "The Pursuit of Love" in the second movie. That's interesting because S&C is all about the pursuit of love, of course, but it's also about the friendship among women, with frank discussions about life and fashionable living, which is what Nancy Mitford's books are also about, especially the relationships between Fanny and the Radlett girls, with Davey and Merlin as kind of the flamboyant male sidekicks.

And the Bolter, of course, representing sexual freedom that everyone feels compelled to denounce but also to indulge.

The Frenchman

What did you think of Fabrice?

For me, he was kind of a weak spot in the book. The idea of him was appealing — a rich, imaginative lover for Linda, who had been stuck with such awful duds — but the flesh-and-blood Fabrice was not attractive to me. He seemed kind of domineering and silly, and I'm not sure I bought him as a brave soldier sacrificing for the Republic. It seemed sort of like he had to die, like they both had to die, for that love affair to resonate. Otherwise, Linda would probably eventually have become just another notch on his bedpost. Do you think? Or did you feel more genuine chemistry there than I detected?

Wonderful old ladies

I love when Linda is talking, toward the end of the book, about how she would like to have been part of a "really great generation. I think it's too dismal to have been born in 1911." And Fanny responds: "Never mind, Linda, you will be a wonderful old lady."

How perfect. It got me thinking of people who will be wonderful old ladies, including you two lovelies.

Davey, the fun hypochondriac

One of the great things about literature is its ability to change your sympathies: to make you see some good where you saw only bad before and vice versa. For example, in real life I've always had a strong aversion to hypochondria and any kind of fixation on ailments/health, and in all the fiction I've encountered I can't really recall a sympathetically drawn hypochondriac, except maybe Emma's dad in "Emma," but even he is fairly annoying. Mitford's character Davey, on the other hand, I found really endearing (although he lacks credibility as a heterosexual, in my view ... hehe). I've been trying to figure out why I like him, and I think it's because, obsessed as he is with his own physical condition, he still manages to be genuinely concerned with the well-being of others, like his mission to get some good food on Aunt Sadie's table during the war and the way he takes care of Fanny and treats her like an adult. His health obsession seems more like a weird hobby than the exercise in total self-absorption that such obsessions usually are in life and in fiction.

What did you think of him?

Linda

What did you think of her and the way she approached life? Were you sympathetic?

"Pursuit of Love" — first reaction

Did you like it? Did you laugh?

The Plow That Broke the Plains

We should watch this. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1119800966783091956#