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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
interesting story of single woman who is sent for a vacation in Switzerland by well meaning friends after a disastrous affair
123rd book of 2020.
Though this book probably deserves slightly more than a measly 3 stars, that's where I am going to leave it for now. This won the Booker back in '84; unsurprisingly. I don't mean to sound like a sceptic but I am starting to sense there is a Man Booker formula - if one writes a book using said formula, one has a good chance of winning. Of the other Man Booker winners I've read, this reminded me somewhat of [b:The Sea|3656|The Sea|John Banville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924824l/3656._SY75_.jpg|987554], [b:The Sense of an Ending|10746542|The Sense of an Ending|Julian Barnes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311704453l/10746542._SY75_.jpg|15657664], [b:The Remains of the Day|28921|The Remains of the Day|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327128714l/28921._SY75_.jpg|3333111]... Though, there are some slight differences. Usually the formula of the Man Booker involves memory (the three listed just now all involve memory) and this one does not, or not in quite the same way. Hotel du Lac does slip into the past. Part of the novel's mystery is hinged on why Edith is at the Hotel du Lac - seemingly this end-of-the-road like place, where writers and the elderly find haven. Edith is a writer, of romance fiction, so she partly has a place there, but that notwithstanding, as a reader, we sense there is more. There's always more.
Actually, this reminded me mostly of [b:The Hours|11899|The Hours|Michael Cunningham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1479663379l/11899._SY75_.jpg|2245431], despite that being a Pulitzer Winner. I have a small theory concerning the two novels. The Hours is about Virginia Woolf, partly, about someone reading Virginia Woolf and a character named Mrs Dalloway. When reading it I got the sense that Cunningham was attempting to write like Woolf: it was slow, stream of consciousness-esque... It had a certain feel to it. Of course, I don't believe he managed to capture Woolf's essence entirely, but he tried. Hotel du Lac is written in that same way - slow, namely. The sentences are very measured (and beautiful, I don't fault the writing) and controlled. What is my Virginia Woolf point here, though? Edith is likened to Virginia Woolf in appearance - several times it happens throughout the book; it made me wonder if Brookner was aware that she was writing in a Woolf-like way, if she set out to do so, with her protagonist resembling her in the process. Anyway, reading this book gave me this impression:
It felt like sitting somewhere, a bench, perhaps, or in a park, and being able to see into someone's home. Looking into someone's home isn't overly exciting. Let's say there is a woman in there flitting about aimlessly; first she drifts to the kettle to make a drink, then to the table, then leafs through a magazine... the minutes pass in this easy Sunday-morning way. You aren't excited by what you are witnessing because nothing exciting is happening, but, you are sitting on a bench or in a park and you have nothing better to do. No, that's not quite right. You are looking because you are interested. Is it because you are waiting for something to happen? Partially, I imagine. The other side of it is, you're nosy, and looking into someone's home and seeing what they are doing is interesting, as well as being uninteresting.
Hotel du Lac is similar. We are sitting there and watching the guests of the hotel. We aren't enthralled, but we are intrigued. The writing is lovely and it keeps us reading, in the beginning. Beauty fades though, as they say, and after halfway through the novel, the writing had lost some of its charm, and I was becoming more aware of the slowness of the novel. And though I usually like slow books, I found that I was at the bench, or park, too long. Nothing too dramatic happened through that small box window. Though, the ending was satisfying, which was also surprising of the book. This really stands at a 3.5 - predictable in style and theme, but gentle writing and interesting characters. Nothing that lingers though, particularly.
Though this book probably deserves slightly more than a measly 3 stars, that's where I am going to leave it for now. This won the Booker back in '84; unsurprisingly. I don't mean to sound like a sceptic but I am starting to sense there is a Man Booker formula - if one writes a book using said formula, one has a good chance of winning. Of the other Man Booker winners I've read, this reminded me somewhat of [b:The Sea|3656|The Sea|John Banville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924824l/3656._SY75_.jpg|987554], [b:The Sense of an Ending|10746542|The Sense of an Ending|Julian Barnes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311704453l/10746542._SY75_.jpg|15657664], [b:The Remains of the Day|28921|The Remains of the Day|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327128714l/28921._SY75_.jpg|3333111]... Though, there are some slight differences. Usually the formula of the Man Booker involves memory (the three listed just now all involve memory) and this one does not, or not in quite the same way. Hotel du Lac does slip into the past. Part of the novel's mystery is hinged on why Edith is at the Hotel du Lac - seemingly this end-of-the-road like place, where writers and the elderly find haven. Edith is a writer, of romance fiction, so she partly has a place there, but that notwithstanding, as a reader, we sense there is more. There's always more.
Actually, this reminded me mostly of [b:The Hours|11899|The Hours|Michael Cunningham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1479663379l/11899._SY75_.jpg|2245431], despite that being a Pulitzer Winner. I have a small theory concerning the two novels. The Hours is about Virginia Woolf, partly, about someone reading Virginia Woolf and a character named Mrs Dalloway. When reading it I got the sense that Cunningham was attempting to write like Woolf: it was slow, stream of consciousness-esque... It had a certain feel to it. Of course, I don't believe he managed to capture Woolf's essence entirely, but he tried. Hotel du Lac is written in that same way - slow, namely. The sentences are very measured (and beautiful, I don't fault the writing) and controlled. What is my Virginia Woolf point here, though? Edith is likened to Virginia Woolf in appearance - several times it happens throughout the book; it made me wonder if Brookner was aware that she was writing in a Woolf-like way, if she set out to do so, with her protagonist resembling her in the process. Anyway, reading this book gave me this impression:
It felt like sitting somewhere, a bench, perhaps, or in a park, and being able to see into someone's home. Looking into someone's home isn't overly exciting. Let's say there is a woman in there flitting about aimlessly; first she drifts to the kettle to make a drink, then to the table, then leafs through a magazine... the minutes pass in this easy Sunday-morning way. You aren't excited by what you are witnessing because nothing exciting is happening, but, you are sitting on a bench or in a park and you have nothing better to do. No, that's not quite right. You are looking because you are interested. Is it because you are waiting for something to happen? Partially, I imagine. The other side of it is, you're nosy, and looking into someone's home and seeing what they are doing is interesting, as well as being uninteresting.
Hotel du Lac is similar. We are sitting there and watching the guests of the hotel. We aren't enthralled, but we are intrigued. The writing is lovely and it keeps us reading, in the beginning. Beauty fades though, as they say, and after halfway through the novel, the writing had lost some of its charm, and I was becoming more aware of the slowness of the novel. And though I usually like slow books, I found that I was at the bench, or park, too long. Nothing too dramatic happened through that small box window. Though, the ending was satisfying, which was also surprising of the book. This really stands at a 3.5 - predictable in style and theme, but gentle writing and interesting characters. Nothing that lingers though, particularly.
The wrong time…
Edith Hope has been banished because she has disgraced herself in the eyes of her friends. She is to spend time in the respectable Hotel du Lac in Switzerland, to think over her faults and come back a better, or at least a more repentant, person – a little like a child sent to bed with no supper. At the hotel, now sparsely inhabited at the end of the season, she finds other women, all too seeming to be in some form of exile. There’s Monica, wife of a rich man who has sent her to the hotel to recover from an eating disorder so that she can fulfil her duty to give him an heir. He has made it clear to Monica that she either produces a child or he’ll divorce her. There’s Mme de Bonneuil, an old lady whose deafness leaves her isolated from joining in with the conversation of the other guests. She has been dumped in the hotel by her son at the insistence of his wife, who doesn’t want the old woman to live with them. And there’s Mrs Pusey, a lady so well turned out it’s hard to judge her age, and her only daughter Jennifer, ditto. Mrs Pusey is a rich widow and spends her empty life travelling from place to place, shopping in exclusive little boutiques. Into this unlikely harem comes Mr Neville, all ready to be the cat among the pigeons…
The characterisation of the women throughout the book is cold and cruel, even of Edith who is our first person narrator. Perhaps we are supposed to assume that it is Edith who despises womankind to the point of misogyny, but I felt the contempt was flowing from the pen of the author. While all of the women are suffering in one way or another from society’s restrictions, I felt that they were portrayed in such a way as to suggest they deserved all they got. To be fair, the men don’t come off any better – no one behaves in a way to make them in the slightest bit appealing or sympathetic, or even interestingly hateful. This meant it was hard for me to care about what happened to any of them. However, the writing is very good and there are some interesting and quite humorous insights into the emptiness of the lives of women unwillingly without men, which kept me going.
Largely it’s a sort of anti-romance. Edith is herself a writer of romantic novels under a pseudonym, and her story to some degree mirrors that of the traditional heroine seeking true love. But the mirror is distorted, and Edith knows she has found her true love but can’t have him. She writes long letters to her lover, David, and it’s through these that we gradually learn what her disgrace was. The book was published in 1984, when I was a bright young thing, and I must say that it feels out of date for its time. So much so that I kept wondering if it was supposed to be historical fiction set, perhaps, in the 1950s, but apparently not. We soon learn that David is a married man, basically happy with his wife but equally happy to have a bit extra on the side from the willing Edith. This isn’t the banishment-scandal – which I won’t reveal – but it is what leads to it. I’ve never had much sympathy for the difficulties adulterers create for themselves, which probably goes a long way to explaining my dislike for Edith. And the scandal, when it is finally revealed, made me like her even less. Call me judgemental! The time difficulty is that while I can quite imagine a woman being sent into social exile in 1950 for such a breach of the conventions, I simply can’t imagine that reaction in the 1980s. Gossip and disapproving looks, yes, but exile? No.
Although I’ve made it sound as if I hated the book, I didn’t. I hated the messages that seemed to be coming off the page of women as useless, spiteful, envious, duplicitous, etc., but I enjoyed the reading experience. The characters might be unlikeable but they are nevertheless well-drawn. I felt Edith was damaged, though I didn’t think she had been given a strong enough reason for this, and there is a real sense of her loneliness – her inability to form relationships at any level of depth with either men or women. I wanted to tell her that, rather than acquiescing in her exile, she’d be better to find some new friends. I hoped she was going to realise that hankering after someone else’s husband wasn’t the best life choice she could make – I wanted her to experience an epiphany and go home wiser, and with a more positive outlook on life. So while I was reading, I was invested in the story. But when it ended, quite frankly I could have thrown the book at the wall. If you want to know why, you’ll have to read it. Perhaps you won’t react the same way – most people seem to feel more kindly towards her.
Having had time to think about it, I reckon if this had indeed been a historical novel set a few decades earlier I’d have liked it much better. It just doesn’t feel right for the 1980s. It feels, perhaps unfairly, as if Edith is an alter-ego for Brookner, and that Brookner is really dissecting the society that prevailed when she was Edith’s age, which would indeed have been roughly the ’50s or ’60s. And perhaps if it had been set in that earlier time, I’d have been able to convince myself that Brookner was giving us a clever picture of society’s misogyny in that era, rather than inadvertently revealing her own. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Edith Hope has been banished because she has disgraced herself in the eyes of her friends. She is to spend time in the respectable Hotel du Lac in Switzerland, to think over her faults and come back a better, or at least a more repentant, person – a little like a child sent to bed with no supper. At the hotel, now sparsely inhabited at the end of the season, she finds other women, all too seeming to be in some form of exile. There’s Monica, wife of a rich man who has sent her to the hotel to recover from an eating disorder so that she can fulfil her duty to give him an heir. He has made it clear to Monica that she either produces a child or he’ll divorce her. There’s Mme de Bonneuil, an old lady whose deafness leaves her isolated from joining in with the conversation of the other guests. She has been dumped in the hotel by her son at the insistence of his wife, who doesn’t want the old woman to live with them. And there’s Mrs Pusey, a lady so well turned out it’s hard to judge her age, and her only daughter Jennifer, ditto. Mrs Pusey is a rich widow and spends her empty life travelling from place to place, shopping in exclusive little boutiques. Into this unlikely harem comes Mr Neville, all ready to be the cat among the pigeons…
The characterisation of the women throughout the book is cold and cruel, even of Edith who is our first person narrator. Perhaps we are supposed to assume that it is Edith who despises womankind to the point of misogyny, but I felt the contempt was flowing from the pen of the author. While all of the women are suffering in one way or another from society’s restrictions, I felt that they were portrayed in such a way as to suggest they deserved all they got. To be fair, the men don’t come off any better – no one behaves in a way to make them in the slightest bit appealing or sympathetic, or even interestingly hateful. This meant it was hard for me to care about what happened to any of them. However, the writing is very good and there are some interesting and quite humorous insights into the emptiness of the lives of women unwillingly without men, which kept me going.
Largely it’s a sort of anti-romance. Edith is herself a writer of romantic novels under a pseudonym, and her story to some degree mirrors that of the traditional heroine seeking true love. But the mirror is distorted, and Edith knows she has found her true love but can’t have him. She writes long letters to her lover, David, and it’s through these that we gradually learn what her disgrace was. The book was published in 1984, when I was a bright young thing, and I must say that it feels out of date for its time. So much so that I kept wondering if it was supposed to be historical fiction set, perhaps, in the 1950s, but apparently not. We soon learn that David is a married man, basically happy with his wife but equally happy to have a bit extra on the side from the willing Edith. This isn’t the banishment-scandal – which I won’t reveal – but it is what leads to it. I’ve never had much sympathy for the difficulties adulterers create for themselves, which probably goes a long way to explaining my dislike for Edith. And the scandal, when it is finally revealed, made me like her even less. Call me judgemental! The time difficulty is that while I can quite imagine a woman being sent into social exile in 1950 for such a breach of the conventions, I simply can’t imagine that reaction in the 1980s. Gossip and disapproving looks, yes, but exile? No.
Although I’ve made it sound as if I hated the book, I didn’t. I hated the messages that seemed to be coming off the page of women as useless, spiteful, envious, duplicitous, etc., but I enjoyed the reading experience. The characters might be unlikeable but they are nevertheless well-drawn. I felt Edith was damaged, though I didn’t think she had been given a strong enough reason for this, and there is a real sense of her loneliness – her inability to form relationships at any level of depth with either men or women. I wanted to tell her that, rather than acquiescing in her exile, she’d be better to find some new friends. I hoped she was going to realise that hankering after someone else’s husband wasn’t the best life choice she could make – I wanted her to experience an epiphany and go home wiser, and with a more positive outlook on life. So while I was reading, I was invested in the story. But when it ended, quite frankly I could have thrown the book at the wall. If you want to know why, you’ll have to read it. Perhaps you won’t react the same way – most people seem to feel more kindly towards her.
Having had time to think about it, I reckon if this had indeed been a historical novel set a few decades earlier I’d have liked it much better. It just doesn’t feel right for the 1980s. It feels, perhaps unfairly, as if Edith is an alter-ego for Brookner, and that Brookner is really dissecting the society that prevailed when she was Edith’s age, which would indeed have been roughly the ’50s or ’60s. And perhaps if it had been set in that earlier time, I’d have been able to convince myself that Brookner was giving us a clever picture of society’s misogyny in that era, rather than inadvertently revealing her own. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
No