Incidents in the Rue Laugier (Vintage Contemporaries)

Maud Gonthier yearns for an escape from the cocoon of the bourgeois modesty. The splendid, caddish David Tyler appears to offer one. In this stylish, deeply knowing novel by the author of Hotel du Lac, Maud's seduction creates a chemistry of longing, sensuality, and betrayal--with a surprising climax. 240 pp.

with This Novel, Booker Prize-winning Author Anita Brookner Confirms Her Reputation As An Unparalleled Observer Of Social Nuance And Deeply Felt Longings. Brief Lives Chronicles An Unlikely Friendship: That Between The Flamboyant, Monstrously Egocentric Julia And The Modest, Self-effacing Fay, Who Is At Once Fascinated And Appalled By Julia's Excesses. Thrust Together By Their Husbands' Business Partnership — And By A Guilty Secret — Julia And Fay Develop An Intense Bond That Is Nonetheless Something Less Than Intimacy, A Relationship In Which We See Our Own Uneasy Compromises, Not Only With Other People, But With Life Itself.

publishers Weekly

a Latter-day Jane Austen, Brookner Distills Irony And Tragedy From The Essence Of Quiet Lives. Here She Reaches New Heights Of Insight And Empathy In The Story Of A Woman Whose Life, While Not Brief In Years, Is Emotionally Stunted, Circumscribed By Her Passive Personality And The Social Climate Of Her Times. The Brevity Of Hope And ``the Hopelessness Of Desire'' Are The Elegiac Leitmotifs That Run Throughout This Lucid, Meticulously Written Story. Narrator Fay Langdon Futilely Seeks To Recapture The ``edenic Simplicity'' Of Childhood, Never Achieving The Romantic Love Promised In The Popular Songs Of The '20s Which She Once Sang On The Radio. Now A ``woman Of Advanced Years,''she Looks Back And Reflects On Her Empty Existence. As The Compliant Wife Of A Coldhearted Workaholic Lawyer Who Does Not Return Her Yearning For Tenderness And Intimacy; As The Obedient Friend Of Julia, A Monstrously Snobbish, Selfish Woman, Married To Fay's Husband's Business Partner; And As The Mistress Of The Latter After Her Husband Dies, Fay Has Learned To Serve Others With Humble Self-effacement That Masks Her Secret Bitterness, Desolation And Longing. Brookner Dips Her Pen In Acid For Her Portrait Of The Poisonous Julia, And In Rue For Her Evocation Of The Specter Of Solitary Old Age That Fay Faces With Dignity. (june)

In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a psudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to resore her to her senses.

But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.

Winner of the 1984 Booker Prize

At the heart of Anita Brookner's new novel lies a double mystery: What has happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman of a certain age who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice?

As Brookner reconstructs Anna's life and character through the eyes of her acquaintances, she gives us a witty yet ultimately devastating study of self-annihilating virtue while exposing the social, fiscal, and moral frauds that are the underpinnings of terrifying rectitude.

At the heart of Brookner's novel lies a double mystery: What has happened to Anna Durrant, a lone woman of a certain age who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice? "Starts like a classic detective story and continues like a metaphysical mystery."--San Francisco Chronicle.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • When romance writer Edith Hope's life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, she flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to restore her to her senses.'Brookner's most absorbing novel... wryly realistic... graceful and attractive.'—Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question'Why love?'

a Novel About The 50-year Friendship Of Two Dissimilar German Refugees Brought Over To England As Children From Nazi Germany. Their Friendship Becomes A Funny Yet Touching Model For The Ways In Which Human Beings Come To Terms With The Tragedy Of Living.

david Leavitt

''latecomers'' Is An Extraordinarily Eloquent Novel, Full Of Pleasures As Well As Lessons. In A Relatively Short Span Of Pages, Ms. Brookner Gives Us The Lives Of All These Characters, Their Tragic Beginnings As Well As Their Resolutions In Old Or Middle Age.ms. Brookner, So Adept At Articulating Discomfort, Maintains All Her Familiar Masteries Here, Yet Seems To Have Reached An Apotheosis Of Her Own. In ''latecomers,'' She Has Given Us A Novel That Teaches Its Readers ''to Be Free, And, Once Free, To Be Brave''. -- New York Times

In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a pseudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to resore her to her senses. But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive. "With this novel, Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner confirms her reputation as an unparalleled observer of social nuance and deeply felt longings. Brief Lives chronicles an unlikely friendship: that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia's excesses. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership -- and by a guilty secret -- Julia and Fay develop an intense bond that is nonetheless something less than intimacy, a relationship in which we see our own uneasy compromises, not only with other people, but with life itself."--Amazon.com 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 spinsterhood is renewed ... Winner of the Booker Prize in 1984, 'Hotel du Lac' was described by The Times as 'A smashing love story. It is very romantic. It is also humorous, witty, touching and formidably clever'. Maud Gonthier yearns for an escape from the cocoon of the bourgeois modesty. The splendid, caddish David Tyler appears to offer one. In this stylish, deeply knowing novel by the Booker Prize winning author of Hotel du Lac, Maud's seduction creates a chemistry of longing, sensuality, and betrayal--with a surprising climax. Cette oeuvre s'inscrit dans la tradition du roman psychologique à l'anglaise. L'auteure y poursuit sa réflexion sur la tension entre le "désir infini" et sa "réalisation limitée", comme le signale C. Jordis. Un roman qui n'a pas la profondeur de ##Regardez-moi## mais qui constitue cependant une réussite. As children, Fibich and Hartmann were smuggled out of Nazi Germany and taken to London. They would never see their parents again. This moving portrait describes the lives of these two children, their marriages, their greeting card business, and their life-long friendship Edith Hope, a successful mature novelist, has made a fool of herself over love and is sent by her friends to a Swiss hotel to come to her senses. Instead of writing a new romance novel, she finds herself preoccupied with her fellow guests After devoting the best years of her life to the care of her ailing mother, Anna Durrant, a compliant, dependable, and now aged woman disappears, in a work that explores the inner turmoil of women short-changed by life When Anna Durant disappears, it is months before anyone notices. To understand the connections of the characters to Anna's disturbing disappearance, they must first confront their own fraudulent behavior. Recounts the holiday of Edith Hope, meek, unmarried, and thirty-nine, who, on the mend from a disastrous love affair, becomes intimately involved with her fellow guests at the Swiss Hotel du Lac Hartmann and Fibich, two lifelong friends separated from their parents when they are brought out of Nazi Germany, respond differently to the pain of separation