Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner

Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner (1984,  184 pages)

International Anita Brookner Day

July 16, 2011

I want to start my post on Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner (1928, UK) by thanking Thomas of  My Porch, one of the co-sponsors of International Anita Brookner Day, for sending me a copy of this book.   I am very appreciative of his expense and efforts in sending this book internationally to me.  

My first Anita Brookner was A Start in Life.    The second was Leaving Home.  I totally loved and think I understood the first line of Leaving Home "Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature".


I liked both of these novels.   The people in her novels all seem to lead very careful well ordered lives.   It is a world where one spends hours wondering if it would be a better idea to wear a light or a dark camel colored coat to tonight's lecture at the British Museum on 14th century Baltic ceramics.   The novels of Brookner are Northern cold climate books, not works of the Tropics.

The Hotel Du Lac won the 1984 Brookner Prize.     There are a number of very good blog posts on it that you can find links to  on the web page for International Anita Brookner Day.    The story line is pretty straight forward.    It centers on Edith Hope, a well known writer of romance novels who has been sent to a hotel in Switzerland to recover from a scandal about her own personal life.

I must say that what I liked best about The Hotel Du Lac, I really loved it, was the lengthy description of The Hotel Du Lac itself.   It seems like a wonderful place to be a regular guest.   The staff and the other guests were just marvelously done.

I did a bit of a study of the first two or three pages of the novel.   I think we can learn a lot from some of Brookner's word choice.   The word "grey" appears three times in the first paragraph.   A character is described as "tight lipped", "older" and "apologetic".   A personality is referred to as "dim" and "low".   The room of the hotel is done in colors of over cooked veal.   The bulbs are weak and twinkle drearily.   There are 100s of these expressions throughout the novel.    Brookner,  is painting a picture for us.        Brookner was an art historian before she became (at age 53) a novelist.    The use of all these colors is very much part of the tone of the book.   I can see why some find her work almost oppressive.

There is a kind of a surprise ending at the close of  The Hotel Du Lac.   I will not give it away other but I really liked it and was a bit shocked I admit.

I enjoyed this book.   It is a work of very subtle intelligence.   The descriptions of the hotel are really wonderfully done.    The people we meet in the hotel are interesting and it is fun to get to know them.

Please share your experiences with Brookner with us.


Mel u
  

"Leaving Home" by Anita Brookner-Woman UnBound Reading Challenge

Leaving Home by Anita Brookner (2005) is the second of her novels that I have read.   In August I read and posted on A Start in Life.   I loved the opening sentence of that book.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

Some people, even those who enjoy reading Brookner's novels, say they are all sort of the same.   The all deal with older (or prematurely aged younger people, mostly women) lonely bookish people who live cautious closed in lives.   The women in both of these works have issues with their  mothers.   Both do research of fairly arcane academic matters, one on women in the novels of Balzac and Emma Roberts of Leaving Home studies and is writing a book about 17th century garden designs.   Both spend a lot of time in libraries.   Both spend a lot of time reading.   

Emma, at 26, decides it is time to leave home.   She leaves London to go to Paris to study.   She leaves behind her mother (who spends most of her time reading) and her dominating Uncle.   The family is financially comfortable but not rich.   Emma meets and slowly becomes friends with a lady working in the library she frequents.    Unlike Emma her new friend, about her age, more interesting looking that pretty, has men friends and a love life.   She persuades Emma to move from her small apartment into a hotel, thinking she might have an opportunity to meet men that way.   There are men in the library, we see their bent over gray heads.

Francoise, her new friend, is pleased to see Emma develop a friendship with a young man down the hall.   In the world of Francoise women are defined by their relationships with men, be they fathers, husbands, or lovers.   Emma subjects here own feelings to microanalyses but does not come to any conclusions that might direct her to a course of action.    Life will start for her when she finds a man.   Her ability to pursue her studies and her writings comes not from anything she has done but from money her father made in commerce.    Without her father's money, we cannot quite fathom what Emma would do and for sure she would not have had the leisure time to develop the interests she did.   These interests define and also limit her life.   If  the male professors who dominate her research field approve her work then her book will be published.     Emma moves back and forth from Paris to London, each  city has a strong meaning for her.  Some times it feels like Emma is a character in a 19th century novel.   Emma does seem to care less about what others think than an early 19th century heroine might.   

The language in the book is beautiful.   Some of the turns of phrase are amazing.   There are some interesting plot twists.   As you read this book  you can feel the loneliness of Emma.   In fact I thought if Emma could simply get involved in book blogging or blogs on 17th century history her life might have been much happier. She then would have not been so effected by a feeling she was disconnected from the world by the seeming narrow range of her interests.   Emma is involved in a very beige toned search for a suitable mate, not so much that she wants one as she wants to seem ordinary.

Anita Brookner wrote her first book at age 53 and has since then written 22 more of them.   As I said, some people say all her books are alike.   I would say read an extract of one of her works on line and see if the writing style appeals to you.    Her books do tell us a lot about the dynamics of power in relationships and the struggle of women to define themselves.    I could see myself reading one every 3 or 4 months.  They do have a kind of claustrophobic feel somehow and some Goodreads reviewers have found her work depressing.

Mel u

Two Very Different Ladies That Love Balzac-

I recently read two very different novels worlds apart in their setting, style, and characters but with a common theme.
They both center around women who love the novels of Balzac, whose lives have been radically affected by a reading of his works. One is an English Academic and the other is a Chinese seamstress in the time of Mao's re-edification programs in rural areas of China.

A Start in Life by Anita Brookner(1982-176 pages)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Dai Sijie (2000, 172 pages, trans. from French by Ina Rilke)

Dr Ruth Weiss, the central character in A Start in Life and the little seamstress (that is how she is always designated)
in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress are as different as two women from the same planet can be.

Dr Weiss is a literary academic who lives a very beige colored life. Her only striking feature is
her beautiful red hair. She lives in cramped quarters and is alone a lot. She is very careful and cautious.
Her real life does not begin until she is between the pages of a book or in a library or bookstore. She has published a book called Women in Balzac's Novels and has a second volume in the works. She basically gets paid to read what she wants to read, write about it and talk about it. Before we say, wow this sounds great, we must linger over
the opening sentence of the book: "Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature". I will admit the book had me at that point. I wanted to know why and I wondered if mine was also somehow and I can already see my middle daughter, 13, retreating into a world of books one day.

The little seamstress works for her father, a traveling tailor, in rural China during the period of Mao's re-edification programs. She is young, full of life, pretty and has many suitors. All she has ever read in her life are works approved by people's committees and the sayings of Chairmen Mao. Two late teenage cousins of affluent families have been sent from the city to do very hard work among the peasants in order to re-edify them. Both of the cousins become infatuated with the seamstress and one of them begins an affair with her. The cousins come into to possession
of a magic suitcase full of 19th century novels, Gogol, Dickens, Flaubert, Melville. The biggest treasure in the suitcase is a number of Balzac novels. (All the novels have been translated into Chinese.) The cousins at once set about reading and rereading these works. They are most taken with Balzac, maybe because they have more of his works but we are never told why they like him so much but maybe we can figure it out. One of the cousins decides to read Balzac to the little seamstress. She falls in love with his stories and they shape her life in ways no one can predict in advance. A lot of exciting things happen in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. We get a good feel for life in rural China. We feel like what it is like to go from the life of a son of the most famous dentist in China to hauling manure in the country side as part of a re-edification program from which you have little change of graduation. Unless you are a saint you will really enjoy the revenge enacted on a village headman. Their attempt to make the little seamstress a more refined girl friend back fires on them in a big way. There is a lot to be learned and thought about in this book. We take for granted our ability to read what we want. It made me think again how great the 19th century masters are, to see that they are not just books you have to read in school or because someone says they are good for you. There are also a number of exciting scenes in the book. You always want to know what will happen next. You really feel like you are in rural China.

Dr Ruth Weiss, the central character of A Start in Life, has no suitors at her door, has never done any physical work in her life and for sure has never had an outdoor romantic encounter. She does have beautiful red hair and we are somehow thankful for that. Her life and her appearance is all shades of beige with maybe a tan suede jacket for the cold.
She fits right into the world of libraries and lecture halls. The book is written with great stylistic economy. Sometimes it seems Dr Weiss is a minor character in a 19th century novel. Dr Weiss has her loves and tragedies but she always has Balzac to retreat into. My guess is that as Dr Weiss ages she won't make any big changes in her life but she will always have her Balzac and her increasing refinement will increase her loneliness. As the little seamstress ages she will do things we can never imagine and she cannot either. I do not think she will do a lot more reading in her life, she will be busy and she has already done the reading that will set the course of her life. "She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price."

I endorse Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress without reservation. It is a fun easy to read book and the production value of the paperback edition are high.

A Start in Life is an book of exquisite economy. It is what one might call academic fiction.

Dai Sijie has two other books translated into English. He was himself in a re-edification program and resides in France.
Both of his other books deal with reading life issues and I hope to read them by year end 2010.

Anita Brookner has written twenty four novels, one a year since she started writing twenty four years ago at age fifty.
It seems most are about somewhat lonely reflective a bit bookish people. I will read more of them also.

Maybe I need to read some more Balzac also!

Mel u