 a gem |
| Review Date: September 19, 2000 |
| Reviewer: marzipan, Greenwich, CT United States |
| Hotel du Lac is Anita Brookner at her best (recognizing that she's a writer who either draws you into her spell or doesn't.) In this novel she held me spellbound. A young woman has been sent by well-meaning friends to respectable Swiss lakeside hotel, elegant and restfully dull, to get over a disastrous love affair. But as in all of Anita Brookner's novels, there are deep layers to apparent dullness, and the traquillity of the hotel's atmosphere and the predictability of its guests is only apparent. The melancholy yet lovely coming of autumn on the shores of the lake is as much an integral part of the story as the heroine's lonely and reflective voice. The other guests at the hotel frame Edith's awareness and become major catalysts of the book's plot. The sadness of the events Edith reveals to the reader is always balanced by her deliciously honest irony toward herself--her awareness that she has chosen her destiny. The ending is remarkable. I read Hotel du Lac when it was first published and again recently. It's even better on re-reading, richer and deeper, proving itself a contemporary classic. Anita Brookner has a voice that's unique, original, and, certainly in this book, perfect. |
The subtleties of the discerning heart
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| Review Date: January 13, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Shalom Freedman, Jerusalem,Israel |
Anita Brookner is a writer of enormous intelligence and subtlety. She is a writer who chronicles the small motions of the heart in expectation and disappointment. She writes usually with a kind of fine irony and her characters rarely escape untouched by careful criticism. In this novel still thought to be her best Edith Hope the protagonist a romance- writer who has walked out of her own wedding and is carrying on a passionate( from her side) affair with a married man escapes to a Swiss vacation resort. There she encounters other lives caught in the desperations of love, and there too she comes to meet the one who will be something like her rescuer, the decent Neville who she will commit herself to a loveless marriage too. With Brookner the heart of the story is not in the major movements of the plot but with the line- by- line perceptions which mark out an extremely intelligent observer of the heart's minor motions. Disappointment and learning to live with a life far less than one has hoped are major Brookner themes. She gives the reader that consolation of knowing that a certain kind of quiet suffering is not theirs alone.
I myself have found that reading a few Brookner novels has been enough, but I know one faithful reader of Brookner who continues to see her as the best diagnostician of the ailing human heart writing novels today.
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A Woman's Illusions Revealed...
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| Review Date: September 25, 2002 |
| Reviewer: , Knoxville, TN United States |
| Within the exquisitely refined prose of Hotel du Lac, British novelist Anita Brookner illuminates the quest of the human soul through the journey of one apparently meek, middle-aged writer of romance. Encouraged to take some time away in order to come to her senses after committing a rather glaring social faux pas (which just so happens to be a manifestation of genuine truth), Edith Hope sees little to be gained from her exile. Yet, whether enveloped within the solitude of her dreary room or lingering within the company of the hotel's curiously assembled guests, this unassuming heroine finds herself gleaning perspective into the nuances of romantic entanglements while, at the same time, acquiring heart-wrenching insight into the ways of the world. The subtlety with which Brookner so gracefully propels the tale, without question, serves to intensify the profundity and depth of the work upon its conclusion. Indeed, a moment arrives in which the reader holds within her hands not merely an engaging work of contemporary fiction, but a mirror within which she may discover her own illusions revealed. |
A Subtle & Winsome Masterpiece
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| Review Date: May 21, 2001 |
| Reviewer: , |
| Potential Readers Beware: This book is subtle, intelligent, witty, heartbreaking, arid, sensuous, eloquent and luminous. If you are looking for a rollicking, wham-bam-thank-you-maam plot, look elsewhere. Anita Brookner writes of the quiet and unnoticed desperation of women and men of a certain age. If you give yourself over to this book and this writer, the reward will be lasting. |
A Perfect Book
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| Review Date: January 6, 1998 |
| Reviewer: Librarian, Southfield, Michigan United States |
| Anita's Brookner's "Hotel du Lac" is purely perfect. Her writing is precise, sparkling, and emotive. Edith Hope (even the name is evocative), is one of Brookner's most finely drawn characters. Sent by well-meaning friends to a timeless, proper hotel at the tail-end of the tourist season for a transgression of the romantic sort, spinsterish Edith is left to ponder the outcome of the rest of her life. But there are tentative friendships, quiet observations and a fragile hope that come from her exile. Reading this novel gave me the exaltation that comes from reading great literary fiction, along with the satisfaction of discovering a well-written story. Treasure this book! |
Emotion seethes beneath the surface of this quiet novel
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| Review Date: September 18, 2003 |
| Reviewer: Peggy Vincent, Oakland, CA |
British author Anita Brookner poses many difficult questions in Hotel du Lac, not the least of which is what, really, can women expect to achieve in this world? This novel, which won the Booker in 1984, like her others, has a main character who is sensitive and solitary - not the stuff of which an adventure tale could be told. But at the book's end, a lot has happened. Her family fears Edith, a 39yo romance novelist, is headed for a nervous breakdown when she stands up her fiancé on their wedding day. They send her to Switzerland, where she spends her days working on her next book, observing other guests at the hotel on the lake, and communing with her married lover.
Doesn't sound like much, does it? Suspend your disbelief and read it. It's excellent. |
Brookner's five-star 'Hotel.'
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| Review Date: January 30, 2007 |
| Reviewer: G. Merritt, Boulder, CO |
1984 Booker Prize winner, HOTEL DU LAC, tells the story of Edith Hope (a.k.a. romantic novelist Veronica Wilde), who has been banished by her friend Penelope to the Hotel du Lac, a "quiet hotel" on the shores of Lake Geneva, following an incident involving a disappointment in love. (As later revealed, Edith's only transgression was being true to herself.) During her stay, and while contemplating with the meaning of love, Edith takes long walks and befriends some of the other guests, including Mrs. Pusey and her daughter, Jennifer. When an attractive middle-aged guest, Mr Neville, proposes a loveless marriage to Edith, she is forced to weigh her lonely independence against a loveless future with an incorrigible womanizer. Will Edith "settle down now" without having "anything more to look forward to," or will she again remain true to herself? Her decision will leave readers hooked on Brookner. While other characters frequently note Edith's physical resemblance to Virginia Woolf, Brookner's narrative style (conveyed through her protagonist's thoughts, letters, and conversations) resembles Woolf's own elegant prose, but with the subtle emotional restraint of Jane Austen. HOTEL DU LAC, like Austen's novels, is a poignant comedy comedy of manners.
G. Merritt |
A wonderful read
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| Review Date: December 27, 2004 |
| Reviewer: Kaye Barlow, Vancouver Island, Canada |
A slow-moving, low-key narrative of a season in a woman's life packs a surprising punch. I have had this book for years and just never got around to reading it. Why, I do not know. I am very glad I finally read it!
Edith Hope is a quiet, late 30ish writer of romance novels who is spending some time at the Hotel Du Lac in Switzerland. She has been "banished" there after backing out of her wedding at the time of the ceremony and causing so much embarrassment to her friends, not to mention the expectant groom.
While at the hotel, she meets a number of women and the descriptions of their lives adds to the aimlessness and seeming futility of her existence. She writes to her secret lover, David, describing them and the life at the hotel and speaks of her love and passion for him. He, needless to say, is married and their relationship is sporadic and quite one-sided. Then, seemingly, rescue comes when a wealthy, successful man staying at the hotel, Philip Neville, proposes to her and offers her a very businesslike, loveless marriage.
Through these avenues, Edith comes to some profound understanding about not only her life but the lives and needs of women.
There are so many undercurrents in this story and the writing is marvelous, wry, witty and multi-layered.
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A novel of extraordinary delicacy
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| Review Date: August 8, 2005 |
| Reviewer: HORAK, Zug, Switzerland |
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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