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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Een heel mooi boek. Ik had niet eerder iets van Anita Brookner gelezen. Smaakt naar meer. Het plot is niet perse heel boeiend. Maar de observaties en gedachten van de hoofdpersoon zijn dat wel. Ik moest aan Proust denken. Vooral de humor.
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Banished to the Hotel du Lac, romance writer Edith Hope thinks she will spend two weeks in isolation before returning to her previous life. Set at the beginning of the second wave of feminism, Anita Brookner's novel examines the (fairly limited) options for a single woman in the world at that time, and of that class. Edith is sent away, not as we imagine for taking a married lover, but rather she has left her boring fiance at the altar. She's also thrown over the friends who have gotten her to this position--they think of her as an old (virginal) maid.
At the hotel, she meets several women who represent varying degrees of acceptable womanhood. Edith is proposed to (really propositioned) by a man who has been cuckolded by his first wife and seeks someone who can help him regain his respectability. For her, he can provide the social status which allows her certain freedoms and prevents her from being pitied.
Set at a solid hotel in Switzerland at the end of the season, the atmosphere is gray and mist-filled (literally in the description) but it seems everyone has stayed too long at a horribly boring party. Brookner provides a wry and sometimes cruel humor and a philosophical bent to the main character who, in her dowdy cardigans, realizes she'll be better off on her own.
At the hotel, she meets several women who represent varying degrees of acceptable womanhood. Edith is proposed to (really propositioned) by a man who has been cuckolded by his first wife and seeks someone who can help him regain his respectability. For her, he can provide the social status which allows her certain freedoms and prevents her from being pitied.
Set at a solid hotel in Switzerland at the end of the season, the atmosphere is gray and mist-filled (literally in the description) but it seems everyone has stayed too long at a horribly boring party. Brookner provides a wry and sometimes cruel humor and a philosophical bent to the main character who, in her dowdy cardigans, realizes she'll be better off on her own.
challenging
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A Sleeper = is something that succeeds when no one expected it to do so. How do you measure success? Winning the Booker Prize in 1984 certainly qualifies. Sitting at 3.59 after 16, 951 ratings on Goodreads--not so much!
What kept me engaged in this disconsolate story, (where the narrator is all about observation and introspection, with nothing much actually happening to her or around her), was the beautiful dreamlike prose paired with witticisms.
"She stepped into the corridor, vibrant with absence."
"The hotel room was the colour of over-cooked veal."
"She had failed to scale the heights of consumerism that were apparently as open to her as to anyone else."
"Everything she knew she had learned from Father. Think again, Edith. You have made a false equation."
Recommended to anyone who likes to read works written by Daphne du Maurier (similar atmospheric tone) or Virginia Woolf (similar messages about womanhood).
What kept me engaged in this disconsolate story, (where the narrator is all about observation and introspection, with nothing much actually happening to her or around her), was the beautiful dreamlike prose paired with witticisms.
"She stepped into the corridor, vibrant with absence."
"The hotel room was the colour of over-cooked veal."
"She had failed to scale the heights of consumerism that were apparently as open to her as to anyone else."
"Everything she knew she had learned from Father. Think again, Edith. You have made a false equation."
Recommended to anyone who likes to read works written by Daphne du Maurier (similar atmospheric tone) or Virginia Woolf (similar messages about womanhood).
I thought reading this for the Savidge Prompts reading challenge would be a good opportunity to tick this off, as I have wanted to read it for years. However, it didn't hold my attention and kept wandering off in my mind.
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
well i do hate all the 'men behave like this and women behave like this' stuff which feels very, very old fashioned and dated (though apparently it's set in the 50s so maybe that makes a little more sense). but she does make some shrewd observations about people of both male and female gender who belong to a certain social class. its very perspicacious about the roles and performances we fall into or that we feel are required of us, conciously or not.
anyway it was beautifully written and i felt like i was there, or had been there before, in this strange liminal temporality of a hotel at the end of a season. it felt very effortlessly atmospheric. and i love books where places or buildings become a character, and this is one such book. though as my dad said, it is a little bit 'dreary'.
spoilers - and im glad she didnt go with mr neville at the end, and i hope she tells david to do one, and then writes a best seller and finds her fulfillment somehow
anyway it was beautifully written and i felt like i was there, or had been there before, in this strange liminal temporality of a hotel at the end of a season. it felt very effortlessly atmospheric. and i love books where places or buildings become a character, and this is one such book. though as my dad said, it is a little bit 'dreary'.
spoilers - and im glad she didnt go with mr neville at the end, and i hope she tells david to do one, and then writes a best seller and finds her fulfillment somehow