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?