book review hotel du lac

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Review: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

“ From the window all that could be seen was a receding area of grey. It was to be supposed that beyond the grey garden, which seemed to sprout nothing but the stiffish leaves of some unfamiliar plant, lay the vast grey lake, spreading like an anaesthetic towards the invisible further shore, and beyond that, in imagination only, yet verified by the brochure, the peak of the Dent d’Oche, on which snow might already be slightly and silently falling ” [Brookner, 1984: 7], so begins the short novel by Anita Brookner, who was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize in 1984.

Clearly, after such an opening, one would expect a rich, highly-descriptive, beautifully-written observational novel of some insight, and this is exactly what the reader gets. Those who are after some fast-paced action in their books should look elsewhere because Hotel du Lac is a quietly powerful, almost reflective, character-driven novel at the heart of which is one embarrassingly unmarried female heroine Edith Hope, an idealistic writer, who abandons her London home for a holiday getaway to be spent in a respectable hotel-establishment in Switzerland. At the Hotel du Lac, Edith encounters a puzzling-to-her company until she finally meets Mr Neville, a gentleman who may finally help our hopeless heroine to gain esteem and respectability in the eyes of society. 

Books on British people abroad deserve a genre of their own. From A Room with a View [1908], A Passage to India [1924] and The Painted Veil [1925], to These Foolish Things [2005], the tradition is certainly there, and there seems to be no end to tragedies, dramas or humour which may arise when there is a cultural clash or when British eccentricities and manners find themselves in foreign lands. One may just sit back and observe the situation unfolding, and there will surely be something to observe. 

H otel du Lac also attempts to follow that tradition, and deals with one theme which I particularly enjoy reading about – characters’ interaction in a closed setting. There is an element of cosiness to these types of novels, and the story is immediately interesting from a psychological point of view. Nearly all action in Hotel du Lac takes place in one single hotel, with a picturesque lake nearby, and the characters breathing in fresh alpine air and enjoying the last summer days in an atmospheric setting. The hotel itself is described as being “ a stolid and dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era of tourism ” [Brookner, 1984: 13].

Soon after Edith settles into the hotel, she meets other guests there: Mme de Bonneuil, Monica, and wealthy Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer. Edith, who feels an odd one out, tries to merge into her new surroundings seamlessly, while also not forgetting what she allegedly came to the hotel for – to write her book. Rather than writing, Edith is distracted and her company is soon wanted by the high-spirited and domineering Mrs Pusey and her obedient daughter Jennifer. By observing women around her, Edith starts to self-assess and reminisce about her own life, trying to understand the societal rules and how her ideals may fit into the broader scheme of things.

Brookner, who is an impressive writer, uses the language beautifully as some tasteful descriptions flow of the location, the characters, and their curious interactions. Edith is presented as the one who cannot interpret people, but she does a good job, especially when she contrasts herself with those around her. There is a line on Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer: “ behind their extreme pleasantness there lies something entrenched, non-negotiable, as if they can really take no one seriously but themselves. As if they feel sorry for anyone who is denied the possibility of being a Pusey ” [Brookner, 1984: 109].

Sometimes it even seems that other characters exist solely for the purpose of Edith to start examining her own life choices and future intentions. As she plunges into “ prolonged reminiscence ” [Brookner, 1984: 135], missing one married London dandy David, to whom she is attached, she unexpectedly meets Mr Neville. This man is of “ few words” [1984: 91], and he holds views on how to lead a life and achieve life goals which are completely opposite of Edith’s. Our heroine then starts to wonder if, through Mr Neville, her “ subterranean ” existence [1984: 92] may finally come to an end.

There is a clear message at the end of the book, but Hotel du Lac was still not a perfect book for me. Even I, who can appreciate quiet, introspective novels, where nothing really is going on, found Hotel du Lac a bit too dry and missing something big and exciting. Perhaps, the novel can even be described as too cerebral, lacking heart and emotion.

🏩 Hotel du Lac is a quiet, characters-driven novel with plenty of observations and dialogues. Its Switzerland setting makes this reading choice particularly attractive because the novel is full of Swiss-ambiance and hotel-cosiness. In other ways, one can say that Hotel du Lac is a quietly rebellious book . It definitely makes a point on the topic of women’s happiness in the society still governed by men, and on their dilemma of choosing to meet societal demands at the cost of their own inner happiness and staying true to themselves. All these points are presented in a rather subtle way, but the overall impression is no less powerful. The book does feel a bit underwhelming as a whole, but Brookner also rendered her story in such a beautiful language that there could be nothing but praise for this literary work. 

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12 thoughts on “ review: hotel du lac by anita brookner ”.

I’ve always thought that Brookner is something of an acquired taste – and acknowledge that I have yet to acquire it. However, I did very much enjoy ‘Lewis Percy’, read for one of my book groups, so if you did feel like trying her again that might be one to consider. There was a very good BBC 2 televised version of Hotel du Lac. If you get a chance I would recommend giving that a viewing.

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Thanks a lot for your recommendations. I will try to check out both “Lewis Percy” and the BBC adaptation.

It is interesting how even a “plotless” novel can feel full of emotion and even excitement. A novel I read earlier this month, Notes of a Crocodile, had no central storyline, but it was really engaging and well written. Sorry to hear that this one turned out to be a bit too dry, and hoping you have better luck with your next read!

That’s a very interesting thought about the number of books concerning Brits abroad. I guess there are loads from the period of the Empire so that explains the ones with Indian and African settings. But there are, as you point out, also lots where it’s an English person in Europe, and also America. I wonder why? Even the quintessentially English Bertie Wooster spends nearly as much time in New York as in London. I think as a nation we maybe have a tendency to think we’re a bit dull and ‘abroad’ is exotic. Plus it is a good way to examine “Britishness” by providing a contrast to other cultures, I suppose. Intriguing – thanks for the food for thought…

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That is a topic that interests me a lot. I think you are right about the Empire connection (past-colony-related tradition), hence a similar trend for travel and exploration experienced by French people. Because of that many British people will find themselves abroad at any particular time, particularly in Egypt, the Caribbean Islands, etc. Agatha Christie books reflect that too. Also, some older books may just correspond to the trend of “The Grand Tour”, something which originated circa seventeenth century and that just means that it is fashionable for young British people to travel to Europe in particular “to complete” their all-around education. It is seen as “prestigious” in relation to other people and in some other circumstances too, I imagine. In that precise setting Forster’s “A Room with a View” was set. And then again the “exotic” setting in British novels is just too irresistible because it is desirable to get away from unpredictable and rainy weather and experience a different culture at the same time + chances are that “exotic” country already speaks English in some form or another.

Lovely review! I liked this one, and like Brookner in general, although she is sometimes so melancholy that I can’t read more than one or two of her books a year. My favorite (so far) is Incidents in the Rue Laugier.

Thanks! Since I liked “Hotel du Lac” I will try to read more Brookner books and will make sure that “Incidents in the Rue Laugier” is one of them, thanks for the suggestion!

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Edith Hope, 39, ""a writer of romantic fiction under a more thrusting name,"" has come to a small, quiet Swiss hotel in the...

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HOTEL DU LAC

by Anita Brookner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1984

Edith Hope, 39, ""a writer of romantic fiction under a more thrusting name,"" has come to a small, quiet Swiss hotel in the off-season--to recover from (or atone for) some unspecified, scandalous ""lapse"" in her London behavior. As in Brookner's Look at Me (1983), this Jamesian, Woolfian heroine is unmarried, wary, cerebral--torn between involvement and detachment, self-dramatization and self-deprecation. At first, then, while writing letters to her married lover back home, Edith plays the role of the watcher, becoming the confidante to two hotel guests--each of whom represents one womanly approach to the problem of romance: regal widow Mrs. Pusey--gloriously well-preserved at 79, accompanied by her plumply sexy daughter--is ""completely preoccupied with the femininity which has always provided her with life's chief delights""; on the other hand, shrill Monica, rebellious and quasi-anorexic wife of a nobleman, offers ""the rueful world of defiance, of taunting, of teasing, of spoiling for a fight."" And a third alternative to Edith's own romanticism is provided by enigmatic guest Mr. Neville, who urges her to adopt an ""entirely selfish"" approach to life and love. Edith considers all these possibilities--while recalling (and revealing) the details of that London ""lapse"": not showing up for her scheduled wedding to a bland, safe suitor. She receives another, odder marriage proposal from elegantly creepy Mr. Neville. (""You are a lady. . . As my wife, you will do very well. Unmarried, I'm afraid you will soon look a bit of a fool."") But finally, after a few more revelations, Edith will return to her romantic one-true-love. . . even though she's quite aware that it's illusory, half-unrequited, doomed. In many ways, this sad little comedy is less subtle, more artificial than Brookner's three previous, similar character-portraits: the themes are laid on thick, starting right off with Edith's surname and occupation; the James/Woolf echoes are blatantly arranged; the players (including Edith herself) are more types than credible characters. Still, for readers who relish a blend of extra-dry humor, tartly wistful introspection, and literary self-consciousness, this small entertainment--winner of England's Booker Prize--will be a delicate, provocative pleasure.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1984

ISBN: 0679759328

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1984

Categories: FICTION

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“Hotel du Lac” by Anita Brookner – a short book review

When I started reading this gentle, slow-moving novel, I couldn’t understand how it could have won the 1984 Booker Prize. It is so … slow. And yet I’m stubborn, which can make me annoying, but it also means when I buy a book I’ll force myself to keep reading, even when I want to ditch it and start drinking tequila instead.

In this case, as with a few others (I almost gave up on A Confederacy of Dunces, now one of my all time favourites), I’m glad I persisted. Roughly halfway through, I found myself engrossed. Toward the end, enthralled.

Laced with beautifully dry humour (and I mean dry – like a martini with no vermouth whatsoever), Hotel Du Lac is about Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is persuaded to flee to a Swiss hotel on a forced vacation to escape an embarrassing scandal she caused at home.

Edith doesn’t come across as the kind to cause a scandal. Quiet and reserved, she’s immediately judged by the other, more forceful hotel guests as being meek and in need of company and advice. These guests include:

• the extravagant and wealthy Mrs Pusey and her doting daughter Jennifer, who like to convert any unsuspecting sap into an audience for their tales of spending
• Monica, an anorexic who loathes the Pusey pair and is only at the hotel because her husband wants her to gain enough weight to bear children
• the charming (yet obnoxious) Mr Neville, who has decided Edith’s only hope is to marry him (even though he’s a stranger and declares they will have a loveless marriage) in order to access a higher rung of society and avoid judgement and shame.

I have a certain approach to writing. I like my sentences short, my pacing fast, and so novels like this throw me as a reader. Yet in the end I was able to slow down enough – and the novel sped up enough – for me to fall for this, just as Edith eventually succumbs to the unexpected pleasures – or at least, distractions – of the Hotel Du Lac.

I’m not sure if it’s worthy of a Booker, but Hotel Du Lac is certainly worthy of being adored.

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Edith Hope is an astute, watchful Englishwoman approaching middle age, a writer of romance novels who secretly believes in the happy endings they offer. After Edith embarrasses her London friends by transgressing their strict but unwritten sexual and emotional codes, they ship her off to a quiet Swiss hotel in the hope that she will become once again her familiar, respectable self. During her dreamlike sojourn at the Hotel du Lac, Edith encounters a strange cast of characters, including Monica, a cast-off wife; Mrs. Pusey, an avid, narcissistic woman with her inscrutable daughter, Jennifer; and a fascinating but rather diabolical gentleman, Mr. Neville. In this period of hiatus from her everyday world, Edith begins for the first time to reflect on her own life with real insight and honesty, and when she is offered the chance to make a radical change in her situation, she responds decisively and with a new knowledge of herself.

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

• Publication Date: October 3, 1995
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• ISBN-10: 0679759328
• ISBN-13: 9780679759324

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Hotel Du Lac

By Anita Brookner

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Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner #Book Review

Perhaps it’s because, like her, they are all adrift; washed up at a lakeside hotel that provides solace to those in need by sticking stolidly to its traditions.

Edith is a romantic novelist who’s been exiled to the hotel after an indiscretion that outraged her friends.  The other guests include the beautiful Monica; a young woman with an eating disorder who’s been sent to the hotel by her husband along with an ultimatum — sort herself out and produce a son and heir otherwise she’ll be history. Then there’s Madame de Bonnueil,  an elderly widow who is despatched to the hotel every summer by a daughter in law who considers her a nuisance.  And finally the overbearing, self-indulgent Mrs Pusey and her curiously clinging daughter who spend their lives flitting around the shopping capitals of the world in pursuit of exquisite hand embroidered lingerie thanks to the generosity of the long-dead but not lamented Mr Pusey.

They confide in Edith and use her as a fresh audience for anecdotes told repeatedly to anyone who will listen. Edith observes them all, as she drifts around the hotel and its environs, trying but failing to write her newest novel and all the while writing to the mysterious ‘David’.  Brookner teases her readers with suggestions that a secret affair with this married man was the  ‘unfortunate lapse’ that landed Edith in Switzerland. It’s not until the last few chapters that we learn the truth.

This is a novel that’s written in a clean and unadorned form of prose which yet manages to captures the atmosphere of this retreat and the foibles of its guests. Nothing much happens for most of the book. Only the arrival of the single, wealthy businessman Mr Neville disturbs the Edith’s routine of solitary walks along the lake shake, much partaking of cake in the one and only cafe in town, and then dinner in the hotel.

Mr Neville succeeds in penetrating Edith’s facade, challenging her presumption that her only options for the future are spinsterhood or a marriage based on the romantic ideal of love that feature in her novels. What he offers her is  a third way. He needs the kind of wife who will never cause a scandal and take great of his home and especially his collection of famille rose  dishes. In return she will gain a recognised social position giving her the freedom to behave as she wishes, protected from castigation and recrimination.

“You will find that you can behave as badly as you like. As badly as everybody else like too. ….And you will be respected for it. People  will at last feel comfortable with you,” he tells her.

As the basis of a relationship, it sounds more like a business transaction than a declaration of affection. Whether it’s one that Edith decides to buy into is something I’m not going to reveal.  At the heart of the decision however is an interesting question about the way society views single women of a certain age and whether they can only achieve social acceptance by virtue of marriage.

The book isn’t long enough to do full justice to this theme unfortunately, nor is the resolution of Edith’s dilemma fully convincing. Are these flaws sufficient grounds for the vocal criticism which greeted the announcement that Hotel du Lac was the winner of the Booker Prize for 1984? Malcolm Bradbury called the novel  “parochial”, and absolutely not the sort of book that should have won the prize while  The New Statesman  called Brookner’s novel “pretentious”. Both seem unfair criticism – while Hotel du Lac doesn’t have the same depth as winners by Michael Ondaatje or Thomas Keneally or the scale of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, but it’s still a well written novel that poses challenging questions and holds the attention long after the pages are closed.

Just as an aside, I found it  impossible to read this novel without remembering the wonderful portrayal of Edith in the film version released in 1986. Anna Massey was exactly how I imagined Edith.

Thanks for sharing

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What do you need to know about me? 1. I'm from Wales which is one of the countries in the UK and must never be confused with England. 2. My life has always revolved around the written and spoken word. I worked as a journalist for nine years then in international corporate communications 3. My tastes in books are eclectic. I love realism and hate science fiction and science fantasy. 4. I am trying to broaden my reading horizons geographically by reading more books in translation

5 thoughts on “ Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner #Book Review ”

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I’ve read this book maybe two years ago. However, I was not able to write a review for it. Reading this refreshes my memory of the novel. Thanks!

Lovely post Karen : ) so many people have chosen to read Hotel Du Lac this month it has made me want to re-read it.

Gosh you were fast off the draw reading that one Ali. I’m so glad I re-read it because it was just as good as I recalled it but I found new aspects in it this time around.

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Culture and Civilisations Stories and Essays

A study of Anita Brookner’s ‘Hotel du Lac’

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• Well argued: 93%
• Interesting points: 88%
• Agree with arguments: 82%

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Hotel du Lac (1984), elegantly written, intelligent and witty, won the Booker Prize and brought considerable fame for its author, Anita Brookner.  This, her best novel, is set in a luxury hotel, out of season, in the pristine setting of  Lake Geneva and the towering mountains in French Switzerland.  The six vividly portrayed and contrasted guests—five English and one French, five women and one man—have personal problems with their mothers and sexual problems with their husbands or lovers.  At the end of the novel the characters have not solved their crippling difficulties and remain in the same perplexity and unhappiness as they began.

Anita Brookner doesn’t explain, until two-thirds of the way into the novel, what dreadful act has led to the banishment of Edith Hope, the autobiographical heroine.  She writes commercially successful, formulaic romances under the slyly comic pseudonym of Vanessa Wilde, which not only uses Virginia Woolf’s initials and the name of her sister, but also recalls the notorious homosexual life of Oscar Wilde.  Edith’s fictional heroines always get their desirable men, but their success does not reflect her own life.  A keen observer of human frailties, she is shabbily dressed and self-effacingly shy: “a mild-looking, slightly bony woman in a long cardigan, distant, inoffensive, quite nice eyes, rather large hands and feet, meek neck.”  She is compared to Woolf, not the stunning young Virginia, but the mature, rather awkward and drab Bluestocking.  But Edith lacks the six essential qualities that established Woolf’s reputation: distinguished father, physical beauty, adulation by the Bloomsbury Group, devoted husband, mental illness and suicide.

Very like Brookner in appearance and character, Edith is well-educated, brilliant and amusing, but rather plain.  She’s had lovers and refused marriage, remains independent, has her own flat and earns her own money.  She writes the same kind of predictable novels and refuses to change them by adding sex scenes to suit contemporary taste.  In her Paris Review interview (1987) Brookner, dedicated to her writing, called herself, with considerable exaggeration, “one of the loneliest women in London.”

Edith’s friends think she has a pitiful existence, can’t imagine she has a secret lover and so try to improve her life.  But she’s quite content with her quiet independence, her loyal agent, her successful novels and her gratifying garden.  Despite her old maidish appearance, she manages to attract three impressive men.  She’s in love with David, a married auctioneer who cannot see her very often, and satisfies him sexually.

Nevertheless, Edith accepts the proposal of the kind, comforting and dull Geoffrey Long, who is still grieving for his recently deceased mother.  He gives Edith his mother’s opal ring, precious to him, meaningless to her.  She loves her garden but will lose it and won’t have another one if she moves into his house.  She lives alone to entertain her secret lover, and drives to the Registry Office wedding alone, instead of with the usual companion.  En route she suddenly changes her mind and tells the chauffeur to drive on. Though usually kind, she cruelly jilts and humiliates Long on their wedding day.  She voluntarily goes to Switzerland, not as a punishment but as a place for reflection.

The old, widowed and lonely Countess Bonneuil has been exiled to the hotel.  She longs to be with her son, but his wife has excluded her from their villa across the lake and he dutifully visits her only once a month.  She weeps when they part, but is stone deaf and rude to the other guests.  Grossly obese, she eats greedily and sloppily.

The self-indulgent Iris Pusey vulgarly and ostentatiously displays the wealth she inherited from her late husband.  He insisted that only the best was good enough for her, and she’s become a compulsive and compensatory shopper, wanting to acquire everything for herself, even if there isn’t enough left over for anyone else.  She overwhelms her adult daughter Jennifer with affection, keeping her fixed in childish behaviour and childlike dependence.  She sees the handsome Swiss waiter bringing breakfast to Jennifer’s room, falsely accuses him of making sexual advances, and is pleased to get him slapped and fired by the manager.  In a rare rebellious moment Jennifer, who wears harem pants, escapes from her mother’s domination for a brief sexual encounter: a frantic tumble and a sad farewell.

Beautiful, elegant, upper-class Monica is married to “Sir John.”  She’s a terrible snob, calls her husband “a jumped-up ironmonger” and despises everyone who’s “in trade.”  Monica suffers from bulimia, secretly gorging on chocolate cakes and feeding the hotel meals to her incontinent lapdog Kiki.  Both Monica, who constantly smokes forbidden cigarettes to suppress her appetite and keep her pencil-thin figure, and the overstuffed dog, sick up their food.  Monica’s aristocratic birth and beauty are nullified by her infertility, and if she can’t produce a male heir after this rest cure at the hotel, her husband will give her the push.  She desperately wants to have a baby, and Kiki is a pathetic substitute for the baby she can’t have.

The names of the characters are revealing.  The surname of Edward Pusey, a severe 19th-century Anglican clergyman and Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, is absurdly inappropriate for the vulgar shopper.  Monica’s name is connected to the Greek word for “solitary” and “alone”; her spoiled lapdog Kiki is named after a notorious prostitute in Montparnasse.  The name of Neville, who pursues and proposes to Edith Hope, is nearly an anagram for “villain.”  While Neville is coldly courting her, Edith, a hope less case, must learn to abandon her hopes .  She shouts, “ ‘I hate you,’ hope fully,” hoping she’ll have the courage to reject him.  The first name of Edith’s London lover David echoes the last name of the French artist David, the subject of a work by Brookner. (When not writing novels, she was a distinguished art historian.)

Edith meets the worldly and attractive Philip Neville, the prosperous owner of a successful electronics company, in the Hotel du Lac.  He has been emotionally wounded by his ex-wife, who ran off with her younger lover and remains surprisingly happy with him.  Edith’s ambivalent analysis of Neville’s character finds reasons both to accept and to reject him: “He is even good-looking: an eighteenth-century face, fine, reticent, full-lipped, with a faint bluish gleam of beard just visible beneath the healthy skin.  A heartless man, I think.  Furiously intelligent.  Suitable . . . a wealthy man in his fifties, fastidious, careful, leisured, attractive in a bloodless sort of way.”

Neville’s harsh, egoistic beliefs are antithetical to Edith’s more humane values.  He adopts personal gratification as an emotional defence and tells her: “You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself.  And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.”  Like the greedy Iris Pusey, Neville wants to have everything.  He proposes marriage with the cold understanding that, unlike his first wife, Edith “will not shame me, will not ridicule me, will not hurt my feelings.”   Though not glamorous or attractive, Edith is a safe choice for his next wife.  She tries to persuade herself that, for a woman in her unenviable position, his strange conditions are a reasonable basis for marriage.

Neville frankly criticises Edith, but proposes a loveless yet comfortable arrangement in which they would both be free to discreetly take lovers.  He pressures Edith, soon after they meet, to make her life-changing decision in only a few days.  She reluctantly accepts, but changes her mind—even though she’s agreed he can have lovers—when she sees Neville leaving Jennifer’s room after their furtive sexual encounter.  Just as she’d backed out of marriage to Long, she now realises that she prefers love with the often absent and unattainable David to a wealthy but loveless life with Neville.

There are excellent contrasts between the crude eating habits of the Countess and of the exiguous Monica; the appearance and attitudes of the imperious, beautiful Monica and the humble, plain Edith.  Edith makes a laughing stock of Geoffrey Long; Neville’s wife has made a laughing stock of him.  Jennifer’s mother falsely accuses the handsome waiter of having sex with her daughter; Neville has sex with her and gets away with it.  Since Edith can’t have David, the man she loves, who “never knew of her empty Sundays, the long eventless evenings, her holidays cancelled at the last minute,” she accepts two proposals and then rejects both.

Edith’s “idea of absolute happiness,” impossible to achieve with David, “is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening.  Every evening.”  Edith realises that David doesn’t love her, that he would never leave his wife and children for her.  But she now has a greater understanding of her life, and accepts her limited but satisfying role with the man she still loves.  She accepts loneliness, the absence of her lover, her lack of social position and children.  She’s an object of pity and failure in the eyes of her friends, though not in her own.

In the Paris Review Brookner said, “The contrast is between damaged people and those who are undamaged,” but in Hotel du Lac all the people are damaged.  She also explained, “Edith Hope twice nearly marries.  She balks at the last minute and decides to stay in a hopeless relationship with a married man.  As I wrote it I felt very sorry for her and at the same time very angry: she should have married one of them—they were interchangeable anyway—and at least gained some worldly success, some social respectability.”  But Neville is much livelier and more interesting than Long, and they are not interchangeable.  Though she identified with Edith, Brookner disingenuously spoke as if she had no creative control over her own fictional characters, as if they had to go their own way despite her wishes, and follow the constraints of the novel.

Brookner uses pictorial and literary allusions, her essential technique, to evoke the scenes and create moods, heighten the style and alert the reader, enhance the interest and meaning of the novel. Slade Professor of Art History at Cambridge and Reader at the Courtauld Institute, she alludes to but doesn’t identify the artists or titles of the nine paintings and one film. Here is a list of these allusions:

–“a picture of men lying splayed in a cornfield under a hot sun” (49).—Pieter Brueghel, The Harvesters (1585) was Edith’s first childhood exposure to art when her father took her to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

–“Turkish baths.  A tiled hammam, its walls bright with coins of light reflected from the water” (56).—J. A. D. Ingres, The Turkish Bath (1862).  In this work and in Delacroix, Edith enters David’s world by imagining the luxurious and sensual pictures that he is auctioning off in his Rooms.  She admires the beauty of art; he emphasises their material value and doesn’t discuss aesthetic qualities with her.

–“silent servants in gauze trousers bringing sherbet . . . in whitewashed houses shuttered against the heart of the afternoon, a dreaming, glowing idleness, inspired by Delacroix” (56).—Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers (1834).

–“that portrait of the Duke of Wellington that was stolen from the National Gallery” (81)—by Francisco Goya (1814) reminds her of Neville’s eighteenth-century face.  It was stolen in 1961 and returned by the thief four years later.

–“this garden of earthly delights” (107)— Hieronymus Bosch (1515). Pusey’s lavish birthday party is ironically compared to the painter’s earthly pleasures.

–pictorial representations: Ship of Fools (160)— Bosch (1500).  In a gloomy mood on the lake steamer, Edith recalls that ships often ferry souls to Hades.  Bosch’s allegory from Plato’s Republic (Book VI) shows stupid people out of control and sailing blindly into chaos and oblivion.

–“slave ship” (160)—J. M. W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840) and his next work portray disasters at sea in spectacular colours.

–“shipwreck” (160)—Turner, The Shipwreck (1805).

–“the crowd began to struggle down the steps, reminding her of a sequence in some early masterpiece of the cinema. . . . She was prepared for shots to ring out, fatalities to occur” (130).—Sergei Eisenstein, the Odessa steps in his film Battleship Potemkin (1925).  The most brilliant allusion compares Edith driving past her wedding guests to a famous sailors’ revolt on a Russian warship in 1905.

–“ Time Revealing Truth” (88)—by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1750), shows what Edith learned about love and herself in the course of her punitive exile.

The next two allusions are ironic.

–“see waiters speeding to their command” (61)—John Milton’s poem, “When I consider how my light is spent” (1673): “Thousands at his bidding speed / And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest.”  The hotel waiters wittily replace God’s racing angels.

–“The woman with the dog” (173)—Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog” (1899). The remote and icy Monica is compared to a married woman’s adulterous affair with a Moscow banker in Yalta.

The following two allusions are titles of Edith’s romantic novels.

–“ Beneath the Visiting Moon ” (17, 24, 51)—Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1607).

— The Sun at Midnight (74, 89) and Le Soleil de Minuit (150).  The English and French titles of Edith’s book are a variant and a translation of Geneviève Laporte’s memoir of Picasso, Sunshine at Midnight (1974).

The other allusions  illuminate Edith’s literate and sophisticated character.

–“a mother who handed down maxims on tablets of stone” (104)—God gives Moses the graven Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, in Exodus 19:20.  Edith disliked her unstable mother, and wishes she had been a strong, moralistic and godlike guide.

–“Through the silent garden, through an iron gate” (20)—Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911) refers to Edith’s precious garden and the threat of losing it.

–“A cold coming I had of it” (10)—T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi” (1927) ironically notes her comfortable but unwilling journey from England to banishment in Switzerland.

–“Not drowning, but waving” (10)—a witty reversal of the poem by Stevie Smith, “Not Waving, but Drowning” (1957).  Edith’s friends think she’s drowning in a wasted life, but she’s actually surviving and waving positively to them.

–“Doomed for a certain term to walk the earth” (22)—Shakespeare, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father (1603), expresses Edith’s gloomy mood when she first arrives in her reluctant rustication.

–“what news from Cranford?” (114)—Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853). David’s lighthearted question alludes to Edith’s ordinary life and uneventful world.

–“they order things better in Swindon” (98)—Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768): “they order this matter better in France.”  Edith sharply refers to Neville’s provincial factory (actually in more desirable Marlborough) after he’s mocked her limited life.

–“A beautiful night, pleasant, calm” (77)—William Wordsworth, sonnet (1803): “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.”  In contrast to the earlier quotation from Hamlet , this allusion expresses her happier mood as she adjusts to the promising life in the hotel.

–“the Wild Boy of Aveyron” (94)—The  French feral child, found at age nine in 1797, is an extreme example of Edith’s acknowledged naiveté.

–“Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth” (28)—Psalms 37:11.  Edith’s character contradicts the false biblical promise.  She’s meek but doesn’t inherit anything.

–“the way of the world” (167)—William Congreve’s play, The Way of the World (1700) confirms Neville’s cynical advice to “behave as badly as you like.”

–“the world well lost for love” (98, 166)—John Dryden, All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677) suggests the theme of the novel.  Edith remains true to her love and loses the worldly gifts promised by Long and Neville.

–“I am, as Swann said of Odette, not your type” (180)—In Marcel Proust’s Swann ’s Way (1913), Swann’s obsessively and painfully pursues Odette though he doesn’t really like her.  Proust expresses Edith’s bitter disillusionment as she remains faithful to the elusive David.

–“the Lady of Shalott” (30)—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1833), comes closest to Edith’s character.  Imprisoned in a tower and with a curse upon her, the sad Lady escapes by boat, floats down to Camelot and dies before she reaches her goal.  Matthew Arnold’s lines apply to Edith’s quest: we have, “After the knowledge of our buried life, / A thirst to spend our fire and restless force / In tracking out our true, original course.”

Jeffrey Meyers, FRSL, has had thirty-three of his fifty-four books translated into fourteen languages and seven alphabets and published on six continents.  He’s recently published Thomas Mann ’ s Artist-Heroes (2014), Robert Lowell in Love (2015). Alex Colville: The Mystery of the Real (2016) and Resurrections: Authors, Heroes—and a Spy (2018).

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A SOLITARY LIFE IS STILL WORTH LIVING

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By Anne Tyler

• Feb. 3, 1985

HOTEL DU LAC By Anita Brookner. 184 pp. New York: Pantheon Books. $13.95.

AT a crucial point in ''Hotel du Lac,'' the winner of England's 1984 Booker Prize, a rich and attractive man leans toward a woman and says, ''You may feel better if you tell me about it.' '' '' 'Oh, do you think that is true?' she enquired, breathing rather hard. 'And even if it is, do you guarantee that the results will be immediately felt? Like those obscure advertisements for ointment that help you to 'obtain relief.' One is never quite sure from what.' ''

It's a conversation that might have come straight from a Barbara Pym novel: the man all intensity, the woman devastatingly down-to- earth. In fact, Anita Brookner has often been compared with Pym - less because of style, one supposes, than because of her cast of players. Her central character is invariably a mild-mannered English spinster, pleasant to look at, if not very striking, and impeccably dressed. She is so correct, so self-controlled and punctilious, that weare surprised to learn how young she is - not yet out of her 30's. Not too old to look up in a quick, alert, veiled way whenever an unattached man wanders past.

But what she sees when she looks at the man - well, till now, that's where she differed from most of the women in Pym's books. Pym's heroine would generally see someone appealing but comically flawed (as all men are, she would reflect with a smile). Miss Brookner's always saw a rescuer. Pym's heroine would be rueful, self-mocking. Miss Brookner's was seriously hopeful, and seriously cast down when her hopes failed to materialize.

In Miss Brookner's first novel, ''The Debut,'' the heroine was induced by a literary tradition of filial duty to give up all claims to a personal future and settle dismally into the role of faithful daughter. In ''Look at Me,'' an unmarried librarian befriended by a glittering Beautiful Couple was eventually dropped, abandoned to a lonely middle age. In ''Providence,'' a woman in love with a professor discovered that the professor did not love her back, and the story ended abruptly with her disillusionment. The final mood has always been bleak, even accusatory - a sort of ''Why me, God?'' that left the reader slightly alienated.

But in ''Hotel du Lac,'' Miss Brookner's most absorbing novel, the heroine is more philosophical from the outset, more self-reliant, more conscious that a solitary life is not, after all, an unmitigated tragedy. Edith Hope receives two proposals of marriage during the course of the story. Both would-be husbands are flawed - one is too dull, one too pragmatic - but the earlier heroines, we suspect, would have settled for one or the other nonetheless. Edith ends up accepting neither. Ironically, it is she, the producer of pulp novels (''a writer of romantic fiction under a more thrusting name''), who is the first of Miss Brookner's heroines to arrive at a nonromantic, wryly realistic appreciation of her single state.

The hotel of the title is a conservative family establishment on the shore of a Swiss lake, and it is here that Edith has been packed off to reassemble herself after committing an ''unfortunate lapse.'' What this lapse was we're not told immediately, but when it is revealed - at just the right moment - it turns out to be entirely in keeping with her character, as well as with the tone of the book: oddly detached, very small-scale, faintly humorous. Edith's real sin, when you get right down to it, is that she has failed to adhere to the path that officious friends have mapped out for her.

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Hotel du Lac Kindle Edition

Winner of the Booker Prize 'The Hotel du Lac was a dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era' Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating loneliness is renewed . . . 'A classic . . . a book which will be read with pleasure a hundred years from now' Spectator 'A smashing love story. It is very romantic. It is also humorous, witty, touching and formidably clever' The Times ' Hotel du Lac is written with a beautiful grave formality, and it catches at the heart' Observer 'Her technique as a novelist is so sure and so quietly commanding' Hilary Mantel, Guardian 'She is one of the great writers of contemporary fiction' Literary Review

• Print length 193 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Penguin
• Publication date May 27, 1999
• File size 2296 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Amazon.com review, from the inside flap, from the back cover, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002RUA54W
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin; New Ed edition (May 27, 1999)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 27, 1999
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2296 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 193 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0679759328
• #177 in Contemporary British Fiction
• #647 in Classic British & Irish Fiction
• #824 in Classic Romance Fiction

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Customers say

Customers find the writing quality brilliant and elegant. They also say the characters are in depth and interesting. However, some find the content boring and hard to read in the beginning. Opinions are mixed on the characterization, with some finding it in depth, while others say there was no character development. Readers also differ on the story, with others finding it interesting and others saying it's not for them.

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Customers find the writing quality brilliant, thoughtful, and intelligent. They also say the author is a brilliant observer of people.

"...Skillful writing. Skillful storytelling. The author is gifted in her use of techniques, though again, they are not techniques I would actively..." Read more

"...The writing is excellent , but I couldn’t give it five stars because for me Edith Hope seemed a bit too weak as a person who was supposed to be such..." Read more

"...She's generous and thoughtful , and she learns a great deal about herself while at the hotel...." Read more

"...The writing is of another era ; the characters well-drawn...." Read more

Customers find the characters elegant, nicely understated, and superb in their grayness.

"...What could she possibly have done? The setting is superb in its grayness . It feels cozy to me- the walks around the lake, tea drinking...." Read more

"...It was nicely understated , I suppose...." Read more

"...Nevertheless, it is a beautifully-crafted small gem ." Read more

"Love the book. Very well written and a stylish presentation . A great old fashion story...." Read more

Customers find the construction of the book solid, evocative, and interesting. They also say the character is brave and intelligent.

"...Edith Hope the main character is interesting - brave and intelligent. definitely recommend this book" Read more

"Old-fashioned, solid , evocative prose..." Read more

" Great literature endures !..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the characterization. Some find the characters in depth, likable, and jump out of the page. They also say the book is a great book club read. However, others say there was no character development.

"... Edith is an interesting character , she loves to observe people and we get to see the world through her eyes as a novelist, always watching people,..." Read more

"...a hotel setting rather than a ship setting, because of the wonderfully drawn characters who come together in this hotel...." Read more

"...Otherwise, the main character is weak , boring and lacks common sense. The Neville character is likely how Bookner views men. Attractive ankles?..." Read more

"...The writing is of another era; the characters well-drawn ...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the story. Some find it interesting, while others say it wasn't for them.

"...Skillful writing. Skillful storytelling ...." Read more

"...I finished it, but it really didn't give a good conclusion . Honestly not sure the purpose of the story." Read more

"...This is a small, sweet little story told with power and force . Brookner is the consummate artist and I enjoyed every aspect of the story...." Read more

" Intriguing & unique main character, this story was quite impossible to put down until the last page, a romance of a different sort... Go along for..." Read more

Customers find the book boring, hard to read in the beginning, and not booker-worthy. They also say it's not empowering or enlightening.

" Boring at times - hard to read in the beginning...." Read more

"...Otherwise, the main character is weak, boring and lacks common sense. The Neville character is likely how Bookner views men. Attractive ankles?..." Read more

"...I started reading and had a very hard time to continue ...." Read more

"...It is well written but not booker-worthy. Un empowering and unenlightening . Hated her choices." Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book very slow and boring.

"Although the book is well written I thought it was a bit slow moving , and didn't actually warm to the protagonist, or ANY of the characters." Read more

" Very slow and boring. Dull characters and a slow plot that felt like the author was dragging out for more book pages...." Read more

"So many books. So little time . Be selective...." Read more

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Book Reviews

'a gentleman in moscow' is a grand hotel adventure.

Annalisa Quinn

A Gentleman in Moscow

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Count Alexander Rostov — recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt — is a "Former Person." Russia's new Soviet masters have sentenced him, improbably enough, to house arrest in Moscow's luxurious Metropol hotel, where he lives out his days decorating the dining room with his bon mots and dashing around like Eloise, if Eloise were set in a twee version of Stalinist Russia.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n," Milton's charismatic Satan tells us — although the finest hotel in Moscow, with its restaurants and barber and elegant clientele, is a bit of a stretch for the fiery pits of damnation (or the snowdrifts of Siberia, for that matter). Anyways, thus confined, Rostov passes the decades making a whole world out of a hotel and the people in it — a precocious 9-year-old, a moody chef, the French maître d', and so on. He is not the king of infinite space, exactly, but he does live a full and rich life according to the principle that, "If one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them."

A Gentleman in Moscow is a novel that aims to charm, not be the axe for the frozen sea within us. And the result is a winning, stylish novel that keeps things easy. Flair is always the goal — Towles never lets anyone merely say goodbye when they could bid adieu, never puts a period where an exclamation point or dramatic ellipsis could stand. In his narratorial guise, he likes to drop in from the sky in dramatic asides, rhetorical questions, and cute self-referential footnotes.

And then there are the digressive flights. When a sinister hotel waiter (and Bolshevik stooge) suggests the wrong wine to accompany Latvian stew, the Count thinks, "The Rioja? Now there was a wine that would clash with the stew as Achilles clashed with Hector. It would slay the dish with a blow to the head and drag it behind its chariot until it tested the fortitude of every man in Troy ..." and so on.

Russia and all of its sufferings seems incidental to the plot — the book could have taken place in a grand hotel in Paris or London or New York just as easily. When the outside world makes itself felt, it's usually as an excuse for a charming caper of some kind: One episode has the Count, the chef, and the maitre d' conspire to scrounge the ingredients for a perfect bouillabaisse from war-depleted Moscow. After three years of plotting, they pull it off, and "with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille — where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life."

All of the verbal excess, the gently funny mock-epic digressions, the small capers and cast of colorful characters, add up to something undeniably mannered but also undeniably pleasant. A Gentleman in Moscow is like a quipping, suavely charming dinner companion that you are also a little relieved to escape at the end of the meal.

Annalisa Quinn is a freelance journalist and critic covering books and culture.