Edith Hope (a.k.a. romance author Veronica Wilde) has been banished by her friends to a stately hotel in Switzerland. During her stay she befriends some of the other guests, each of whom has his or her own tale. Edith struggles to come to terms with her career and love--the lack, the benefits, and the meaning thereof.

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

A masterpiece, 06 May 2008
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written, 14 Dec 2007
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 20 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 19 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

A masterpiece, 06 May 2008
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written, 14 Dec 2007
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 20 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 19 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig


A novel full of melancholy, 02 Jul 2007
Rachel Kennedy is a solitary and self-sufficient woman who likes to lead a well-ordered life free of commitments and emotional turmoil. She owns a small bookshop in London and one day befriends Heather Livingstone and her parents Oscar and Dorrie - a mutual fondness which is a puzzle given Rachel's character. It soon becomes clear to Heather that Oscar and Dorrie think her a suitable companion for Heather, a kind of elder sister or guardian angel. Their good daughter, who comes home to them every weekend and telephones every day, is the world to them and they wish her still theirs and somebody else's as well, somebody whose supervision could replace their own. To them, Rachel could be Heather's passport to the world. So Oscar and Dorrie regard Rachel as a chaperone for Heather. And to Rachel her odd relationship with the Livingstones is of great value too. For her they are fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else has broken.
It is when Heather decides to become engaged to Michael Sandberg, an awkward and untrustworthy man, that Rachel realises that her power over her friend is limited. The fate of this ill-assorted couple is bound to be doomed...
Well drawn characters, plausible situations and sound psychological motives are the strengths of "A Friend From England". A quiet, atmospheric novel as only Mrs Brookner can write them.

Anita Brookner's 20th novel is another superb, touching and honest meditation on marriage, feminism and filial duty. The Bay of Angels is a finely crafted, affecting story of an intelligent, independent woman, Zoe Cunningham, working through her responsibilities to herself, her mother and her sex. Brookner's opening chapter is a masterclass, moving her heroine from childhood through to her late teens in broad but heightened detail; it showcases all her skills in presenting a character, in the first person, and that character's motivations, self-analysis and hopes. The reader is immediately brought in to Zoe's confidence and feels a close empathy with, and minute understanding of, her world.

Zoe is a singular, although not a lonely child, bookish, observant, temperate but also a lover of fairy tales and the escapes they seem to offer. Her mother echoes these characteristics but, in her, they evidence something a little more diminished. Remarkably, forced out by well-meaning relatives to a social event she would much rather avoid, her mother meets and marries the kind, ebullient Simon. Simon seems to Zoe like a Santa Claus figure, a figure that seems to confirm her trust in fairy tales, who has rescued her mother from long afternoons, and longer evenings, of waiting. She wonders if perhaps now someone will rescue her.

Gentle tragedies, and a dissection of loneliness and the flawed routes out of it offered to women, follow. We become captivated by Zoe's world and by Brookner's rendering of her inner life. Brookner has been at the height of her powers for so long that words like genius and masterpiece flow easily. The astonishing thing is that these words must be invoked to do this level of writing any justice at all. --Mark Thwaite

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

A masterpiece, 06 May 2008
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written, 14 Dec 2007
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 20 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 19 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig


A novel full of melancholy, 02 Jul 2007
Rachel Kennedy is a solitary and self-sufficient woman who likes to lead a well-ordered life free of commitments and emotional turmoil. She owns a small bookshop in London and one day befriends Heather Livingstone and her parents Oscar and Dorrie - a mutual fondness which is a puzzle given Rachel's character. It soon becomes clear to Heather that Oscar and Dorrie think her a suitable companion for Heather, a kind of elder sister or guardian angel. Their good daughter, who comes home to them every weekend and telephones every day, is the world to them and they wish her still theirs and somebody else's as well, somebody whose supervision could replace their own. To them, Rachel could be Heather's passport to the world. So Oscar and Dorrie regard Rachel as a chaperone for Heather. And to Rachel her odd relationship with the Livingstones is of great value too. For her they are fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else has broken.
It is when Heather decides to become engaged to Michael Sandberg, an awkward and untrustworthy man, that Rachel realises that her power over her friend is limited. The fate of this ill-assorted couple is bound to be doomed...
Well drawn characters, plausible situations and sound psychological motives are the strengths of "A Friend From England". A quiet, atmospheric novel as only Mrs Brookner can write them.

Bay of wordiness, 08 Feb 2008
I was so looking forward to this book being that it was set in London and Nice, unfortunately not much description of either. It was also far to 'wordy' ie 15 long words when 1 or 2 would have done - very disappointing.I also found the timeline confusing - when was it set(what era)? ,and how old was Zoes mother when she died? we never did find out.

Powerful and involving, 30 May 2007
I read the Bay of Angels for a reading group I attend. I really enjoyed it. The novel, which is beautifully written, captures the internal dialogue of Zoe Cunningham, as she moves between London and Nice trying to sort out family affairs. I have read two other titles, but I think this has been my favourite and is one I would go back to to re-read. Anita Brookner manages to portray the loss and loneliness that can be a part of our lives. If you are already a fan, then you probably have an idea what to expect, as similar themes weave through her books. I would heartily recommend it.

not up to hotel du lac, 20 Jul 2005
disappointing. i have read all of ms. brookner's other novels. this was work to get through.

Bleakly pointless story, pompously pretentious language, 20 Aug 2001
Sorry, I know it's not fashionable to rebel against the mastery of the great Professor Brookner, but I hated this book. Although I was tempted to set it aside, I stuck with it in the hope it would have an interesting outcome, but ultimately it didn't.

I read it on holiday in France, which I thought was fitting given the subject. The precis on the back cover was completely misleading - I guess the publishers had to do something with it because if they'd said "Here's a gloomy tale of human suffering and you'll need a dictionary by your side to make it through" it wouldn't have sold so well.

I'm all for good vocabulary but Brookner takes it too far. For instance, from memory as I don't have the book with me, Zoe doesn't get ready to move house, but she (words to the effect that..) "prepares herself for her installation..." there are many, many other flowery phrases and words I still haven't had time to look up, but all in all it made it too much like hard work.

The last line of the book says "it is not yet time to put the book down". Believe me, it was.

After a lifetime of personal restraint and servitude, Julius Hertz, the protagonist of Anita Brokkner's new novel The Next Best Thing is in a quandary. Finally free to make his own decisions and choices in life, he rattles around his central London flat, pounds the familiar streets and sits quietly on the same park bench on nodding terms with the world. At 73, he decides it is time for action of some kind. Time to move on, physically and spiritually. The big question is, where and with whom?

As Hertz struggles with his self-induced dilemma, he looks back over his life, searching for an answer. If he can only think things through rationally, perhaps the way forward was always there, hidden somewhere in the past, waiting for him to finally realise its significance? With a mixture of pathos and mild distaste, he reflects on his distant, ordered childhood in pre-war Germany, his unrequited love for his beautiful, haughty cousin Fanny, to whom, in desperate middle age, he would rashly propose. He remembers the family's enforced exile to London, their role as polite refugees, obligated to kindly compatriots. And then the onset of his brother's "illness", precipitating the end of his career as a concert pianist, the crumbling of his mother's dreams and his own rise as family carer. And his brief respite marriage to Josie whose pragmatism could never dovetail with his own servility.

Anita Brookner has, herself, moved on with The Next Big Thing. Her 21st novel is a finely wrought, painfully elegant treatise on old age: the wearing loneliness, the reflections, regrets and recriminations and the occasional stirrings of now-fading desires. And instead of the familiar middle-aged Brookner women, the protagonist is a man, albeit a passive and docile creature, whose lonely life has been shaped at every turn by the needs of others. Reading The Next Big Thing is not an easy experience. Brookner has stripped her characters of their flesh and, with her unique insight, let us into the distant recesses of their minds, their hearts and their souls, so often revealing how each can harbour its own conflicting desires. The only certainty in life is the inevitability of our end--in the meantime our duty to ourselves must be one of brutal self-honesty and personal fulfilment.--Carey Green

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

A masterpiece, 06 May 2008
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written, 14 Dec 2007
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 20 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 19 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig


A novel full of melancholy, 02 Jul 2007
Rachel Kennedy is a solitary and self-sufficient woman who likes to lead a well-ordered life free of commitments and emotional turmoil. She owns a small bookshop in London and one day befriends Heather Livingstone and her parents Oscar and Dorrie - a mutual fondness which is a puzzle given Rachel's character. It soon becomes clear to Heather that Oscar and Dorrie think her a suitable companion for Heather, a kind of elder sister or guardian angel. Their good daughter, who comes home to them every weekend and telephones every day, is the world to them and they wish her still theirs and somebody else's as well, somebody whose supervision could replace their own. To them, Rachel could be Heather's passport to the world. So Oscar and Dorrie regard Rachel as a chaperone for Heather. And to Rachel her odd relationship with the Livingstones is of great value too. For her they are fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else has broken.
It is when Heather decides to become engaged to Michael Sandberg, an awkward and untrustworthy man, that Rachel realises that her power over her friend is limited. The fate of this ill-assorted couple is bound to be doomed...
Well drawn characters, plausible situations and sound psychological motives are the strengths of "A Friend From England". A quiet, atmospheric novel as only Mrs Brookner can write them.

Bay of wordiness, 08 Feb 2008
I was so looking forward to this book being that it was set in London and Nice, unfortunately not much description of either. It was also far to 'wordy' ie 15 long words when 1 or 2 would have done - very disappointing.I also found the timeline confusing - when was it set(what era)? ,and how old was Zoes mother when she died? we never did find out.

Powerful and involving, 30 May 2007
I read the Bay of Angels for a reading group I attend. I really enjoyed it. The novel, which is beautifully written, captures the internal dialogue of Zoe Cunningham, as she moves between London and Nice trying to sort out family affairs. I have read two other titles, but I think this has been my favourite and is one I would go back to to re-read. Anita Brookner manages to portray the loss and loneliness that can be a part of our lives. If you are already a fan, then you probably have an idea what to expect, as similar themes weave through her books. I would heartily recommend it.

not up to hotel du lac, 20 Jul 2005
disappointing. i have read all of ms. brookner's other novels. this was work to get through.

Bleakly pointless story, pompously pretentious language, 20 Aug 2001
Sorry, I know it's not fashionable to rebel against the mastery of the great Professor Brookner, but I hated this book. Although I was tempted to set it aside, I stuck with it in the hope it would have an interesting outcome, but ultimately it didn't.

I read it on holiday in France, which I thought was fitting given the subject. The precis on the back cover was completely misleading - I guess the publishers had to do something with it because if they'd said "Here's a gloomy tale of human suffering and you'll need a dictionary by your side to make it through" it wouldn't have sold so well.

I'm all for good vocabulary but Brookner takes it too far. For instance, from memory as I don't have the book with me, Zoe doesn't get ready to move house, but she (words to the effect that..) "prepares herself for her installation..." there are many, many other flowery phrases and words I still haven't had time to look up, but all in all it made it too much like hard work.

The last line of the book says "it is not yet time to put the book down". Believe me, it was.

Mixed feelings, 03 Dec 2008
I've not read much Brookner before - one novel, I think, about 20 years ago. And I have very mixed feelings about this one. On the positive side I do enjoy prolonged and detailed character analysis, not being a particular fan of more popular 'plot driven' novels. Brookner here reminded me strongly of E L Doctorow, with an ability to dive into almost endless, almost dreamlike, reminiscence.

But in saying I'm not keen on plot driven novels, I don't mean I care for plotless novels. For if there ever was one, this is it. Nothing, beyond an abortive day trip to Paris, actually happens. It is virtually all interior monologue. And unless you enjoy living in the head of someone who is 73, depressed and thwarted, that can get rather tedious.

She does write beautifully, no doubt. But I dislike a show off. I've a large enough vocabulary to get me through a rigorous English degree, but was still treated to quite a sprinkling of words I needed to look up in a dictionary. And to some extent I blame sloppy editing - I don't care what kind of tour de force Brookner represents to her editor, he/she should still have told her quite firmly that there is no excuse for using 'inanition' several times in one book. Unless it's a thesaurus, perhaps.

Pedantic or majestic?, 14 Nov 2003
Anita Brookner has been compared to Henry James, and the solemn precision of her prose can be either soothing or irritating. It does sometimes give the impression that she is writing about characters and situations from the beginning of the twentieth century, rather than the twenty-first. Although the context makes it pretty clear that her main character in this novel travels to Paris on the Eurostar, the name is not mentioned, and, for all we know from his general attitude, he might be about to catch the Orient Express.
The novel is a meditation on the onset of old age - the main character is seventy-three - and, as often in Brookner’s novels, on the feeling that “real life” has somehow passed one by.
Personally I found the book extremely gloomy - which, far from being a criticism, is of course a tribute to the way the impression of monotony and predictability is rendered. As for the style... if you like words like “animadvert”, “appurtenances” and even “naïf” [sic] slipped casually into a contemporary novel as if they were still on everybody’s lips, you’ll have a feast.

English at its best, 25 Jul 2003
It's not a book that one is likely to forget as soon as it is put down. On the contrary, it works on your mind for a long time afterwards. It is always a pleasure to read a Brookner novel. Her theme may seem somewhat monotonous and predictable after the first few novels, but she writes so beautifully, with such keen observation of human behaviour, and with such impeccably vivid and meticulous description of her characters that it by far outweighs any possible drawbacks. English language at its best.
Here, the main character Herz, an elderly Jewish immigrant in his early 70's, has arrived at the crossroads of his life. He is now living the life of a solitary pensioner. Fanny, a cousin and his only relative left, turned down his marriage proposals decades earlier for a better future than he could offer. She is still after all those years his biggest regret in life although he is now trying to suppress these sentiments.
Brookner takes us on a journey through Herz's life, from his childhood days in Berlin, his complex family history after arrival in England, his short-lived marriage, to the present time where he is at odds with what to do with himself in the time left to him.
Herz's life story is to me depressing. He keeps regretting not having lived a more adventurous life, never having had the sufficient frivolity nor the courage. Could he have earned the affection/love of his one and only real love in life, Fanny, if he had played his cards differently? As it is, the future looks endlessly hopeless.
A rather sad read, although there are a few amusing incidents where Herz's old-fashioned life style clashes with that of the modern world, but gloom was for me the dominant feeling. However, a very compelling, sound, and rewarding read.

Old age and recriminations, 12 Jul 2002
Julius Herz is 73 and spends the remaining days of his life pondering how, on the whole, things might have been. The victim of a failed and rather loveless marriage and divorce, he finds that late in life he has always tried to please others in his family and now realises, almost too late, that he can now please himself. Being alone, however, does not make this easy and as he reminisces he finds that his unrequited love has resurfaced and dreams of a possible future with the woman he really wanted to marry. As he says at one point: "A life observing the rules does not predispose one to reckless happiness."
A rather sad book, Anita Brookner's 21st novel again demonstrates her unique ability to examine and anatomize the thoughts and feelings of her main character.

After a lifetime of personal restraint and servitude, Julius Hertz, the protagonist of Anita Brokkner's new novel The Next Best Thing is in a quandary. Finally free to make his own decisions and choices in life, he rattles around his central London flat, pounds the familiar streets and sits quietly on the same park bench on nodding terms with the world. At 73, he decides it is time for action of some kind. Time to move on, physically and spiritually. The big question is, where and with whom?

As Hertz struggles with his self-induced dilemma, he looks back over his life, searching for an answer. If he can only think things through rationally, perhaps the way forward was always there, hidden somewhere in the past, waiting for him to finally realise its significance? With a mixture of pathos and mild distaste, he reflects on his distant, ordered childhood in pre-war Germany, his unrequited love for his beautiful, haughty cousin Fanny, to whom, in desperate middle age, he would rashly propose. He remembers the family's enforced exile to London, their role as polite refugees, obligated to kindly compatriots. And then the onset of his brother's "illness", precipitating the end of his career as a concert pianist, the crumbling of his mother's dreams and his own rise as family carer. And his brief respite marriage to Josie whose pragmatism could never dovetail with his own servility.

Anita Brookner has, herself, moved on with The Next Big Thing. Her 21st novel is a finely wrought, painfully elegant treatise on old age: the wearing loneliness, the reflections, regrets and recriminations and the occasional stirrings of now-fading desires. And instead of the familiar middle-aged Brookner women, the protagonist is a man, albeit a passive and docile creature, whose lonely life has been shaped at every turn by the needs of others. Reading The Next Big Thing is not an easy experience. Brookner has stripped her characters of their flesh and, with her unique insight, let us into the distant recesses of their minds, their hearts and their souls, so often revealing how each can harbour its own conflicting desires. The only certainty in life is the inevitability of our end--in the meantime our duty to ourselves must be one of brutal self-honesty and personal fulfilment.--Carey Green

Not her best by any means..., 24 Sep 2008
Anita Brookner has a rare gift for portraying loneliness, exclusion, repression and so on, and for exposing the subtle psychological manipulations and maneouverings in human relationships, but they are scarcely in evidence in this lightweight and romantic offering. Her infatuation with the manners of the upper middle classes has always been a bit of a problem, and some of the characters at the Hotel du Lac are ridiculous in their pretentious and empty headed strategies, which the protagonist details in her unsent letters with an equally empty headed obsessiveness. The romantic interest, Mr Neville, is a laughable caricature, and her longing for the married and unavailable David comes across as the rather bored and stupid longing of a woman with enough intelligence to know better. Infidelity was hardly shocking when this book was written, but for us to sanction and approve it we need a bit more grit and angst and passion. It already seems quite dated in style, a slightly risque Jane Austen without the technical skill, and for Edith to credit herself with any kind of resemblence to Virginia Woolf is literary blasphemy! Brookner has written much better and much more movingly than this. Although her writing is technically excellent, here she seems to have had in mind a rather regrettable section of the mass market - the bored bourgeoise housewife preoccupied with rich men and beautiful clothes. Dear dear.

Still the best Booker prize winner, 14 Oct 2006
Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...

A novel of extraordinary delicacy, 08 Aug 2005
In her novel, Mrs Brookner portrays a middle-aged writer of romantic fiction, Edith Hope. People claim that there is a certain resemblance with Virginia Woolf in her features. At any rate her novels are published under the pen-name of Vanessa Wilde and they bear such titles as "The Sun at Midnight", "Beneath the Visiting Mood" or "The Stone and the Star". Edith doesn't seem to hold writing in high esteem. She describes this activity more like a compulsion: "she bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation", enjoying a rest "after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions". In fact she even considers reading as a kind of cure for the psychologically diseased: "Fiction, the time honoured resource of the ill-at-ease..."
After settling down at the Hotel du Lac - set in a small village on the Swiss shore of lake Geneva - Edith meets her extravagant fellow lodgers: Iris Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Mme de Bonneuil and Monica accompanied by her insufferable dog Kiki. During her numerous discussions with these women, Edith starts reflecting on the life she has led so far and on love in general. The reader also learns about her past and her troubled relationship with her mother. And it is not before the end of the novel that we discover why Edith came to the Hotel du Lac, why she left London in such a haste and what exactly the "unfortunate lapse" was which brought her to her temporary exile in Switzerland.
Like one critic said about "Hotel du Lac": "Novels like Anita Brookner's are why we read novels".

Lacks passion, 10 Dec 2001
I was extremely disappointed in this book. The woman is supposed to be in love, yet in the height of its expression, she utters "Oh David, oh David". She has all the passion of a dead jellyfish. It read like a creative writing student had sat down in a hotel to describe the guests in a rather superficial way.

Its one redeeming feature is that if this truly trivial piece can win the Booker Prize, then there really is hope for anyone who can pick up a pen!

Reasons for being single, 27 Jan 2000
Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!

A masterpiece, 06 May 2008
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written, 14 Dec 2007
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 20 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, 19 Oct 2006
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig


A novel full of melancholy, 02 Jul 2007
Rachel Kennedy is a solitary and self-sufficient woman who likes to lead a well-ordered life free of commitments and emotional turmoil. She owns a small bookshop in London and one day befriends Heather Livingstone and her parents Oscar and Dorrie - a mutual fondness which is a puzzle given Rachel's character. It soon becomes clear to Heather that Oscar and Dorrie think her a suitable companion for Heather, a kind of elder sister or guardian angel. Their good daughter, who comes home to them every weekend and telephones every day, is the world to them and they wish her still theirs and somebody else's as well, somebody whose supervision could replace their own. To them, Rachel could be Heather's passport to the world. So Oscar and Dorrie regard Rachel as a chaperone for Heather. And to Rachel her odd relationship with the Livingstones is of great value too. For her they are fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else has broken.
It is when Heather decides to become engaged to Michael Sandberg, an awkward and untrustworthy man, that Rachel realises that her power over her friend is limited. The fate of this ill-assorted couple is bound to be doomed...
Well drawn characters, plausible situations and sound psychological motives are the strengths of "A Friend From England". A quiet, atmospheric novel as only Mrs Brookner can write them.

Bay of wordiness, 08 Feb 2008
I was so looking forward to this book being that it was set in London and Nice, unfortunately not much description of either. It was also far to 'wordy' ie 15 long words when 1 or 2 would have done - very disappointing.I also found the timeline confusing - when was it set(what era)? ,and how old was Zoes mother when she died? we never did find out.

Powerful and involving, 30 May 2007
I read the Bay of Angels for a reading group I attend. I really enjoyed it. The novel, which is beautifully written, captures the internal dialogue of Zoe Cunningham, as she moves between London and Nice trying to sort out family affairs. I have read two other titles, but I think this has been my favourite and is one I would go back to to re-read. Anita Brookner manages to portray the loss and loneliness that can be a part of our lives. If you are already a fan, then you probably have an idea what to expect, as similar themes weave through her books. I would heartily recommend it.

not up to hotel du lac, 20 Jul 2005
disappointing. i have read all of ms. brookner's other novels. this was work to get through.

Bleakly pointless story, pompously pretentious language, 20 Aug 2001
Sorry, I know it's not fashionable to rebel against the mastery of the great Professor Brookner, but I hated this book. Although I was tempted to set it aside, I stuck with it in the hope it would have an interesting outcome, but ultimately it didn't.

I read it on holiday in France, which I thought was fitting given the subject. The precis on the back cover was completely misleading - I guess the publishers had to do something with it because if they'd said "Here's a gloomy tale of human suffering and you'll need a dictionary by your side to make it through" it wouldn't have sold so well.

I'm all for good vocabulary but Brookner takes it too far. For instance, from memory as I don't have the book with me, Zoe doesn't get ready to move house, but she (words to the effect that..) "prepares herself for her installation..." there are many, many other flowery phrases and words I still haven't had time to look up, but all in all it made it too much like hard work.

The last line of the book says "it is not yet time to put the book down". Believe me, it was.

Mixed feelings, 03 Dec 2008
I've not read much Brookner before - one novel, I think, about 20 years ago. And I have very mixed feelings about this one. On the positive side I do enjoy prolonged and detailed character analysis, not being a particular fan of more popular 'plot driven' novels. Brookner here reminded me strongly of E L Doctorow, with an ability to dive into almost endless, almost dreamlike, reminiscence.

But in saying I'm not keen on plot driven novels, I don't mean I care for plotless novels. For if there ever was one, this is it. Nothing, beyond an abortive day trip to Paris, actually happens. It is virtually all interior monologue. And unless you enjoy living in the head of someone who is 73, depressed and thwarted, that can get rather tedious.

She does write beautifully, no doubt. But I dislike a show off. I've a large enough vocabulary to get me through a rigorous English degree, but was still treated to quite a sprinkling of words I needed to look up in a dictionary. And to some extent I blame sloppy editing - I don't care what kind of tour de force Brookner represents to her editor, he/she should still have told her quite firmly that there is no excuse for using 'inanition' several times in one book. Unless it's a thesaurus, perhaps.

Pedantic or majestic?, 14 Nov 2003
Anita Brookner has been compared to Henry James, and the solemn precision of her prose can be either soothing or irritating. It does sometimes give the impression that she is writing about characters and situations from the beginning of the twentieth century, rather than the twenty-first. Although the context makes it pretty clear that her main character in this novel travels to Paris on the Eurostar, the name is not mentioned, and, for all we know from his general attitude, he might be about to catch the Orient Express.
The novel is a meditation on the onset of old age - the main character is seventy-three - and, as often in Brookner’s novels, on the feeling that “real life” has somehow passed one by.
Personally I found the book extremely gloomy - which, far from being a criticism, is of course a tribute to the way the impression of monotony and predictability is rendered. As for the style... if you like words like “animadvert”, “appurtenances” and even “naïf” [sic] slipped casually into a contemporary novel as if they were still on everybody’s lips, you’ll have a feast.

English at its best, 25 Jul 2003
It's not a book that one is likely to forget as soon as it is put down. On the contrary, it works on your mind for a long time afterwards. It is always a pleasure to read a Brookner novel. Her theme may seem somewhat monotonous and predictable after the first few novels, but she writes so beautifully, with such keen observation of human behaviour, and with such impeccably vivid and meticulous description of her characters that it by far outweighs any possible drawbacks. English language at its best.
Here, the main character Herz, an elderly Jewish immigrant in his early 70's, has arrived at the crossroads of his life. He is now living the life of a solitary pensioner. Fanny, a cousin and his only relative left, turned down his marriage proposals decades earlier for a better future than he could offer. She is still after all those years his biggest regret in life although he is now trying to suppress these sentiments.
Brookner takes us on a journey through Herz's life, from his childhood days in Berlin, his complex family history after arrival in England, his short-lived marriage, to the present time where he is at odds with what to do with himself in the time left to him.
Herz's life story is to me depressing. He keeps regretting not having lived a more adventurous life, never having had the sufficient frivolity nor the courage. Could he have earned the affection/love of his one and only real love in life, Fanny, if he had played his cards differently? As it is, the future looks endlessly hopeless.
A rather sad read, although there are a few amusing incidents where Herz's old-fashioned life style clashes with that of the modern world, but gloom was for me the dominant feeling. However, a very compelling, sound, and rewarding read.

Old age and recriminations, 12 Jul 2002
Julius Herz is 73 and spends the remaining days of his life pondering how, on the whole, things might have been. The victim of a failed and rather loveless marriage and divorce, he finds that late in life he has always tried to please others in his family and now realises, almost too late, that he can now please himself. Being alone, however, does not make this easy and as he reminisces he finds that his unrequited love has resurfaced and dreams of a possible future with the woman he really wanted to marry. As he says at one point: "A life observing the rules does not predispose one to reckless happiness."
A rather sad book, Anita Brookner's 21st novel again demonstrates her unique ability to examine and anatomize the thoughts and feelings of her main character.

Mixed feelings, 03 Dec 2008
I've not read much Brookner before - one novel, I think, about 20 years ago. And I have very mixed feelings about this one. On the positive side I do enjoy prolonged and detailed character analysis, not being a particular fan of more popular 'plot driven' novels. Brookner here reminded me strongly of E L Doctorow, with an ability to dive into almost endless, almost dreamlike, reminiscence.

But in saying I'm not keen on plot driven novels, I don't mean I care for plotless novels. For if there ever was one, this is it. Nothing, beyond an abortive day trip to Paris, actually happens. It is virtually all interior monologue. And unless you enjoy living in the head of someone who is 73, depressed and thwarted, that can get rather tedious.

She does write beautifully, no doubt. But I dislike a show off. I've a large enough vocabulary to get me through a rigorous English degree, but was still treated to quite a sprinkling of words I needed to look up in a dictionary. And to some extent I blame sloppy editing - I don't care what kind of tour de force Brookner represents to her editor, he/she should still have told her quite firmly that there is no excuse for using 'inanition' several times in one book. Unless it's a thesaurus, perhaps.

Pedantic or majestic?, 14 Nov 2003
Anita Brookner has been compared to Henry James, and the solemn precision of her prose can be either soothing or irritating. It does sometimes give the impression that she is writing about characters and situations from the beginning of the twentieth century, rather than the twenty-first. Although the context makes it pretty clear that her main character in this novel travels to Paris on the Eurostar, the name is not mentioned, and, for all we know from his general attitude, he might be about to catch the Orient Express.
The novel is a meditation on the onset of old age - the main character is seventy-three - and, as often in Brookner’s novels, on the feeling that “real life” has somehow passed one by.
Personally I found the book extremely gloomy - which, far from being a criticism, is of course a tribute to the way the impression of monotony and predictability is rendered. As for the style... if you like words like “animadvert”, “appurtenances” and even “naïf” [sic] slipped casually into a contemporary novel as if they were still on everybody’s lips, you’ll have a feast.

English at its best, 25 Jul 2003
It's not a book that one is likely to forget as soon as it is put down. On the contrary, it works on your mind for a long time afterwards. It is always a pleasure to read a Brookner novel. Her theme may seem somewhat monotonous and predictable after the first few novels, but she writes so beautifully, with such keen observation of human behaviour, and with such impeccably vivid and meticulous description of her characters that it by far outweighs any possible drawbacks. English language at its best.
Here, the main character Herz, an elderly Jewish immigrant in his early 70's, has arrived at the crossroads of his life. He is now living the life of a solitary pensioner. Fanny, a cousin and his only relative left, turned down his marriage proposals decades earlier for a better future than he could offer. She is still after all those years his biggest regret in life although he is now trying to suppress these sentiments.
Brookner takes us on a journey through Herz's life, from his childhood days in Berlin, his complex family history after arrival in England, his short-lived marriage, to the present time where he is at odds with what to do with himself in the time left to him.
Herz's life story is to me depressing. He keeps regretting not having lived a more adventurous life, never having had the sufficient frivolity nor the courage. Could he have earned the affection/love of his one and only real love in life, Fanny, if he had played his cards differently? As it is, the future looks endlessly hopeless.
A rather sad read, although there are a few amusing incidents where Herz's old-fashioned life style clashes with that of the modern world, but gloom was