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Hotel du Lac

by Anita Brookner

February 2001

Synopsis

Hotel du Lac"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 pseudonym. 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 restore 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." (Publisher)

Reviews

  • "Anita Brookner is like the Henry James narrator who declares with cool modesty that her story will be made as clever and amusing as possible. She writes romantic love-stories which are not sentimental, banal, fevered, or extrovert. Her sophisticated entertainments are thoughtful, self-analytic, up to a point, though not parodic, subversive, or experimental. They avail themselves of the indulgence of emotional fantasy and the graces of form. The reader is flattered, allowed to wallow in what Angus Wilson once called a 'Maggie Tulliver good read' while savouring intelligence and humour. . . . The strength of the story lies in its images of loneliness. The quest for the romantic absolute is lonely, the deprived lover is lonely, Edith's mixture of romantic idealism and awareness is lonely." (Barbara Hardy - The Times Literary Supplement)
  • "A remarkable novel…Anita Brookner's best." (Victoria Glendinning - The Sunday Times/London)
  • "Brookner's most absorbing novel…wryly realistic…graceful and attractive." (Anne Tyler - The New York Times Book Review)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by Anita Brookner

  • 'Altered States'
  • 'The Bay of Angels'
  • 'Brief Lives'
  • 'A Closed Eye'
  • 'Dolly'
  • 'Falling Slowly'
  • 'Fraud'
  • 'Latecomers'
  • 'Lewis Percy'
  • 'Look at Me'
  • 'A Private View'
  • 'Providence'
  • 'Romanticism and its Discontents'
  • 'Soundings: Studies in Art & Literature'
  • 'Undue Influence'
  • 'The Visitors'