Still the best Booker prize winner
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Beautifully written and hugely entertaining. Pity that Miss Brookner never wrote another high comedy of quite the same order...
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A novel of extraordinary delicacy
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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".
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Lacks passion
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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!
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Reasons for being single
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Very subtle and understanding analysis of how a woman who likes her own company could choose singleness...Deep and entertaining reading!
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to be or not to be a single woman
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The author uses the near-solitude of a hotel in the off-season to convey the state of mind of a woman at a crossroads. If, like the heroine, you need a room of your own in which to create, you will relate to this book. A quiet masterpiece, beautifully capturing things unsaid about writing, observing, and being a woman.
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