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.