Liars and Saints

Some Other Anita Brookner Facts: (1) There is sometimes a "meta" quality to her writing. Her first book was called "The Debut." (Sometimes, it's called "A Start in Life.") Brookner seems to be winking at the reader when she observes that a protagonist "ruined her own life by reading too much fiction." (Of course, the reader of Brookner's fiction might also be ruining *her* own life!) There's also loud contrarian thinking on display, on every page. Isn't reading supposed to be an inherently good thing? Something virtuous, something we can brag about? Well, why should that be the case? (2) One of Brookner's main themes was "the triumph of the dumb and strong over the intelligent and weak," according to Tessa Hadley. Brookner did not feel the need to supply happy endings. She did not feel that careful introspection would lead to conquering-the-world--because when is that actually true, in life? I imagine she would h...

Toward the start of Brookner's "Lewis Percy," a young man returns from Paris to London to take care of his ailing mother: On his return to London Lewis was briefly amazed by the quality of the light, which seemed to him poor, as if the day could not work up enough energy to throw off the darkness of dawn. Used as he was to the fine grayish mist that cloaked Paris on the worst days of bad weather, he had frequently to rub his eyes in this land of what seemed to him ruminative half-shadow. He supposed that he needed glasses. Gradually, imperceptibly, he became accustomed to London's muted tones, and to the wistful noise of a car passing along a street sunk in the slumber of mid-afternoon. For a few weeks he wandered about his neighborhood, registering new facts or facts which he had forgotten. He was struck by the modest cheerfulness of the people, whose main efforts seemed to go into keeping the business of life ticking over. "Mustn't grumble," they sai...

People gobbled up Anita Brookner in the eighties, then abandoned her in the nineties. Like James Taylor, Ms. Brookner seemed to have overstayed her welcome. Like Anne Tyler, she had insisted on using the style, the idiosyncratic, unforgettable style, that was available to her--over and over again. Brookner kept on working, and she died a few years ago. And when she died, various people wrote, rather tediously and predictably, about how they had not properly valued her work, and about how she was so much greater, as a novelist, than they had ever realized. This is maybe not news, but: Brookner is worth reading because she shatters your expectations, then shatters, then shatters, then shatters some more. In Brookner's stories, parents do not want their children....but the parents aren't gargoyles. They're just selfish, lost people, as people in actual life sometimes tend to be. In Brookner's stories, women might marry just out of laziness, or out of a desire for narra...