Anita Brookner Books

A novel about human relationships, focusing, unusually for Brookner, on two male characters. They met at school and forty years later can no more think of living apart than of divorcing their wives. This book deals with their gradual coming to terms with the emotional gaps in their lives.

Kitty Maule longs to be "totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful." She is instead clever, reticent, self-possessed, and striking. For years. Kitty has been tactfully courting her colleague Maurice Bishop, a detached, elegant English professor. Now, running out of patience, Kitty's amorous pursuit takes her from rancorous academic committee rooms and lecture halls to French cathedrals and Parisian rooming houses, from sittings with her dress-making grandmother to seances with a grandmotherly psychic. Touching, funny, and stylistically breathtaking, Providence is a brightly polished gem of romantic comedy.

A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes the opportunity to share in the joys and pleasures of the lives of a glittering couple, only to find her hopes of companionship and happiness shattered.

Modest and reliable throughout his life, George Bland faces retirement with uncertainty, an uncertainnty compounded by the death of his friend, Putnam. However his life will alter dramatically with the arrival of the invasive and mercenary Katy Gibb.

"Rachel Kennedy and Oscar Livingston were not precisely friends or family. Rachel had been acquanted with Oscar for some time, first as her father's accountant, and then as her own. Part owner of a London bookshop, Rachel is thoroughly independent and somewhat distant, determinedly restrained in her feelings for others, but above all responsible. And it is this trait that leads Oscar and his wife Dorrie to seek out Rachel as a mentor for their twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Heather. Yet when Heather seems poised to make an unsuitable romantic decision, Rachel decides to speak out and intervene, causing an unwitting and devastating insight."--Provided by publisher.

This text contains a male protagonist in the form of a young solicitor, his mother, a loveless marriage, and holidays on the Swiss border.

Mild and self-effacing, Paul and Henrietta Manning are ill-prepared for the interuptions into their lives of Dolly, widow of Henrietta's brother Hugo. Dolly's ways are idiosyncratic, yet she is an object of fascination and dread to her relatives, especially her niece, Jane.

From the author of HOTEL DU LAC and ALTERED STATES, a novel which explores the themes of loneliness, friendship, fate and opportunity, in which a woman, forced into early retirement, longs to be rescued by the ideal man.

Anita Brookner is justly famous for her elegant, almost Jamesian character studies of women poised on the threshold of life. But in Lewis Percy, she performs a remarkable leap of imaginative empathy in her portrayal of a man torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.

In an ambitious departure from her usual form, Anita Brookner expands her canvas in FAMILY AND FRIENDS to create a richly textured novel about the life of a wealthy Jewish family in London, centering upon the generation that came to maturity between the two World Wars. "Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight".--WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD.

Fay Langdon has relinquished her singing career to marry Owen, a highly successful solicitor. At one of their dinner parties Fay meets the glamorous, self-obsessed Julia and is destined to join the handful of acolytes who provide Julia with ammunition for her merciless scorn and disapprobation. As the years pass and Fay's and Julia's lives grow empty of purpose, they are drawn together by their fear of age and isolation. Yet a mutual mistrust continues to exist between them until Fay is driven to one last heroic act.

Born to elegant but frivolous parents, Harriet grows up unguided, shrouded in an innocence that her friendship with Tessa, and later her marriage to Freddie, do nothing to dispel. Freddie is far older and disapproving of Tessa and her husband Jack. And yet all four are bound together.

Nadine has always wanted her daughter Maud to be married and off her hands. When the two women are staying at Nadine's sister's house near Meaux, they become part of a sophisticated, worldly group into which neither Maud nor Edward Harrison, a young visitor from England, seem to fit. Maud if swept off her feet by Davis Tyler, a stylish, irresponsible young man who robs her of her innocence and disappears. Edward forced into adulthood by his inheritance of a bookshop, and thus a career, takes Maud into his care. But for both of them the shadow of Tyler is always there, illuminating their feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and loss.

"Herz is seventy-three and facing the difficult question: what is he going to do with the rest of his life? How is it all going to end?" "He could propose marriage to an old friend he hasn't seen for thirty years; he could travel; he could make a trip to Paris to see a favourite painting; he could sell his flat, move, start afresh. He must do something with the time left - but what?"--Jacket

The extraordinary Anita Brookner gives us a brilliant novel about age and awakening. In Visitors, Brookner explores what happens when a woman's quiet resignation to fate is challenged by the arrogance of youth. Dorothea May is most at ease in the company of strangers. When her late husband's relatives prevail on her to take in a young man for the week before an unexpected family wedding, Thea's carefully constructed, solitary world is thrown into disarray. As the wedding approaches, old family secrets surface and conflicts erupt between the generations, trapping an unwilling Thea in the middle. Confronted by the company of Steve Best, a carefree young wanderer, Thea's fragile facade of peaceful acceptance is pierced, forcing her to face in a new way both her past and her future.

Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single, until she meets Mr Neville.

“For some reason, the very negative thoughts which she had during that interview with the rich-stockbroker woman in Kensington did not remain with her… She forgot that she despised the woman for not looking after her own children, and she forgot how much she envied and hated her for being rich enough to pay someone else to shovel her baby’s shit.”

Moving between Nice and London, The Bay of Angels, Anita Brookner's 20th novel, makes the point that not everyone needs conventional relationships to be happy. It relates the story of Zoe, whose life changes when her widowed mother marries a wealthy older man and moves to Nice.

Paul Sturgis is a retired bank manager who lives alone. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers. He longs for companionship. And then two women enter his life and the complexities of companionship are revealed to him

Enigmatic Claire is 30 and lives alone in Marylebone. She is content with her life, although she recognises she has become more reserved and independent since her wilder student days. Her life changes when she embarks on an affair with a widower.

Præsentation af Antoine Watteaus (1684-1721) værker.

Im Alter von vierzig Jahren erkennt Dr. Weiss, dass die Literatur ihr Leben ruiniert hat. Die Protagonistin, schön, intelligent und einsam, sucht bei Balzacs Heldinnen Antworten auf Fragen zu Leben und Liebe und reflektiert ihre Kindheit und Jugend, die ihre isolierte Existenz geprägt haben. Zu Beginn schien ihr neues Leben in Paris vielversprechend. Das Debüt der Autorin wird als meisterhaft beschrieben und von Kritikern hochgelobt. Tessa Hadley bezeichnet es als einen ihrer besten Romane, der „schwarzhumorig, düster und sehr witzig“ ist. Der Roman wird als groß, intensiv und an den brillanten Erzähler Balzac erinnernd beschrieben. Leser schätzen die skurrilen Charaktere und die kleinen sowie großen Weisheiten, die in dieser britischen Erzählung vermittelt werden. Die Mischung aus Humor, Sarkasmus und einer melancholischen Note berührt und amüsiert zugleich. Die scharfsichtige Erzählweise und der Esprit der Sätze bieten eine Lehrstunde in Verdichtung. Das Buch verspricht großes Lesevergnügen und ist für alle Leser geeignet, nicht nur für Frauen.

Die verletzte weibliche Seele Nach zwanzigjähriger Ehe steht Blanche Vernon allein da. Ihr Mann Bertie hat sie für eine Jüngere verlassen. Blanche glaubt, dass Bertie ironischerweise gerade deswegen gegangen ist, weil sie es ihm zu leicht gemacht hat. Ihre Umgebung sieht das ein wenig anders. Ist Blanche nicht vielmehr eine exzentrische Person, deren ausgefallene Gesprächsthemen und übersteigertes Interesse an Romanfiguren für andere eher anstrengend sind? Während Blanche sich die Zeit zunächst mit Museumsbesuchen und der Aufrechterhaltung ihres perfekten äußeren Erscheinungsbilds vertreibt, gerät sie zunehmend in den Bann einer jungen Frau und eines vierjährigen Mädchens, von denen sie annimmt, dass sie ihrer Hilfe bedürfen. Doch je näher sie der chaotischen Familie kommt, desto unklarer wird, wer eigentlich wen instrumentalisiert und ob Blanche andere ähnlich schlecht einzuschätzen vermag wie sich selbst ...

Blanche Vernon steht nach zwanzig Jahren Ehe allein da, nachdem ihr Mann sie für eine Jüngere verlassen hat. Während sie versucht, ihr Leben mit Museumsbesuchen und einem perfekten Äußeren zu bewältigen, wird sie von einer chaotischen Familie angezogen. Es bleibt unklar, wer in dieser Beziehung wen manipuliert.

Lewis Percy träumt von einem heldenhaften Leben, wie in seinen geliebten Romanen. Doch die Realität sieht anders aus: Er lebt mit seiner Mutter in einem Londoner Vorort und geht den einfachen Weg. Schließlich steht er vor der Entscheidung, ob er ein Stück Abenteuer in sein Leben bringen kann. Ein überraschendes Ende erwartet den Leser.

Cette oeuvre s'inscrit dans la tradition du roman psychologique à l'anglaise. L'auteure y poursuit sa réflexion sur la tension entre le "désir infini" et sa "réalisation limitée", comme le signale C. Jordis. Un roman qui n'a pas la profondeur de ##Regardez-moi## mais qui constitue cependant une réussite.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (10. říjen 1684, Valenciennes – 18. červenec 1721, Nogent-sur-Marne) byl francouzský malíř, je považovaný za prvního z mistrů rokoka. Přesný den narození neznáme, 10. říjen 1684 je dnem křtu. Osobitá studie představuje znamenitého rokokového "malíře galantních slavností", oprošťuje obraz jeho života od legend a naznačuje, že jeho obvyklá charakteristika je jen dílčím zachycením neobyčejných schopností tohoto umělce, jejichž nápověď je patrna v jeho vrcholných a posledních pracích. K ní se druží výběr z kritických mínění jeho současníků i pozdějších spisovatelů a komentář k jednotlivým reprodukcím, který je zasvěceným průvodcem po historických i uměleckých souvislostech všech 6 černobílých a 45 barevných vyobrazení.