Hotel Du Lac
Anita Brookner
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0679759328
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a psudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to resore her to her senses.
But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.
she recounted tales of conquest at the various committee meetings which were the very stuff of her social life. 'That dreadful little man,' she would say dismissively, of someone who did not know the rules of her game. She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years. She and Edith had in common the dispositions of their houses, for they were at opposite ends of the tiny terrace, their domestic arrangements, which consisted of the window-cleaner (not to be missed; they
Edith paused. 'Yes, you go, dear,' said Mrs Pusey in a remote voice, as if to signify the intensity of her reading. 'I expect we'll see you after dinner.' A crowded day, thought Edith, grateful for the silence of her companion, as they walked slowly away from the little town, along the water's edge. The castle, dour, grim, a rebarbative silhouette, a corrective to the dazzle of the water, occupied a spit of land which advanced into the lake as if to impede further progress. Soon it would
there was a certain amount of bobbing up and down and nods and becks and wreathed smiles, most of which were cast about by Mrs Pusey herself. Monica and Mme de Bonneuil, more stoical about this sort of celebration than I am, drank stolidly, although Mme de Bonneuil raised her glass in a rather charming slow gesture before draining it. And then, when it seemed as if the entertainment were over, and the event duly noted, Alain and another boy in a white coat wheeled in a trolley on which there
could play the traditional suitor so openly, and how impressed everyone had been, principally Penelope, but in the end even Edith herself, by his devotion, his generosity, his endless flowers, his fussy care, and finally his mother's gloomy opal ring. And he had offered her a complete life, a new home ~o move into, new friends, even a cottage in the country, luxuries which she would never have thought to procure for herself. And he was a personable man, if a little old-fashioned in his views:
condemned out of hand, of course. For what seemed like hours she listened to Penelope and Mrs Dempster discoursing on her moral turpitude, her childishness, her lack of dignity, trust, loyalty, and decent feminine sensibility. She then heard them tell her that she had had her last chance. That there was no future for her in that line, whatever she may think. That they wondered how she could hold up her head. That the best thing she could do would be to go away until she had come to her senses and