I'm so glad Thomas at My Porch hosted International Anita Brookner Day in July because, even though I missed it due to those waves of nausea that were plaguing me for about three months, it put me on to a great new-to-me author and that inspires endless amounts of gratitude!  Even though I'm late (and, therefore, won't go into too many plot details as you can read much better synopses and reviews over at My Porch), I did read my chosen Anita Brookner novel, Hotel du Lac.  And, contrary to expectations (after I read up on what a few respected bloggers had to say about this particular Brookner novel), I absolutely loved it.  

Set entirely in an European hotel at the end of the season, Hotel du Lac is elegantly dismal.  From the curtains to the residents, Brookner's eye for the telling detail is unerring and can be a little stark at times.  And yet there is such beauty and humour in the grey.  Our heroine (or non-heroine) is novelist Edith Hope, who has little hope (ahem) of escaping the miasma of guilt and embarrassment that has occasioned her friends-initiated exile from home (some friends!).   The reader knows that Edith is trapped, the reader -- from the beginning of the novel* -- suspects that Edith will stay trapped, and yet the novel remains fascinating.  This is because Brookner just knows how to write stunningly well.  We're transported to an imagined reality that should feel claustrophobic and oppressive -- so deep is the loneliness and isolation of our main character -- and yet because it's all told with such ease of expression, such wry humour, such elegant detail (yes, the word elegant keeps coming up), one doesn't feel oppressed.  At least I didn't.


Edith is unflinching in her assessment of the other hotel residents, too. Which provides entertainment and insight (the interaction with the absurdly formidable Mrs. Pusey and daughter, for example!).  A sympathetic and a frustrating character, is Edith.  So intelligent and perceptive and, well, ridiculously trapped.  One wants to swoop in and say it's not all dark curtains and grey mornings! She's so fully realized as a character that one feels a stake in her happiness which, again, doesn't become oppressive, but does inevitably frustrate.  


Yes, despite the frustrations with Edith's lack of initiative and some warnings that Hotel du Lac is not Brookner's best, I definitely loved this novel (the writing style alone! Oh my goodness!) and I suspect I will return to Brookner again and again.  Because if this isn't her best, what joys await?!??!


* We're introduced to her thusly: "Edith Hope, a writer of romantic fiction under a more thrusting name, remained standing at the window, as if an access of good will could pierce the mysterious opacity with which she had been presented . . ." Now, what hope can we, as readers, have that she will end better than she began?  But note the humour in "a more thrusting name."  Love, love, love it! :)