A disturbing book that was at the same time a pleasure to read. We begin when Edith Hope commences her stay at the Hotel du Lac, a luxury hotel, prideful of the fact that it is the place people go when they need a deep rest. Brookner's prose perfectly encapsulates the mood as Edith stands before her window looking out on a grey day:"Edith Hope, a writer of romantic fiction under a more thrusting name, remained standing at the window, as if an access of good will could pierce the mysterious opacity with which she had been presented, although she had been promised a tonic cheerfulness, a climate devoid of illusions, an utterly commonsensical, not to say pragmatic, set of circumstances--quiet hotel, excellent cuisine, long walks, lack of excitement, early nights--in which she could be counted upon to retrieve her serious and hard-working personality and to forget the unfortunate lapse which had led to this brief exile, in this apparently unpopulated place, at this slowly darkening time of the year, when she should have been at home."Guests come to rest, often sent by their families because their families don't know what else to do with them. In a way, it feels like a sanitorium, though at the same time it is like a nice pension in Switzerland. Edith herself is attempting to recover from something, and her friends are glad to be rid of her. When Edith gets there, the season is beginning to end. There is a feeling of both of loneliness and security. I expected this to be a type of romance novel. The description on the back of my book is a bit misleading in this regard. However, I found a great exploration of love and its role in relationships. For years before coming to the hotel, Edith was involved with a married man. She knows that to him she is a diversion, someone to visit for relaxation. But since he has never said as much himself, she cannot bring herself to fully accept the fact either. She is honest with herself, but her philosophies have prevented her from changing. She sees herself on the periphery, and she knows that's where people expect her to be. At the hotel, she meets a cast of characters who are mostly out-of-season women who, like her, feel but fail to comprehend or accept their situation. The one man staying at the hotel approaches Edith with a different philosophy that Edith both wants and does not want. "Since I freed myself from all that I have discovered the secret of contentment. . . . It is simply this. Without a huge emotional investment, one can do whatever one pleases. One can take decisions, change one's mind, alter one's plans. There is none of the anxiety of waiting to see if that one other person has everything she desires, if she is discontented, upset restless, bored. One can be as pleasant or as ruthless as one wants. If one is prepared to do the one thing one is drilled out of doing from earliest childhood--simply please oneself--there is no reason why one should ever be unhappy again."Edith recognizes the logic of this theory. She wants to free herself from what others see her as. But she recognizes contradictions. But the man has grown an interest in her. She wants what his philosophy offers but she knows she cannot have what she wants if he too espouses this philosophy. The book has many paradoxes and contradictions--one of its strengths.I enjoyed the book from the beginning to end. Brookner's structure is excellent, and she can go backwards and forwards in time smoothly. She can also present the contradictions and their connections to feminism and post-modern theories. However, the book is not itself an exercise in these theories. It's a fairly straight-forward story that offers a lot of food about what's wrong and right with relationships.
How to talk about a book you've loved so much? It is the most difficult task. How to transmit to others the froth of pleasure in which you sank while reading it? How to explain that the language was perfect, the scenes, the characters, the feeling, the longing, the pychology, all of it has pierced through almost three decades since it was written? How to explain that this particular author is considered among the most boring and plotless ever to have walked the earth, how can she be so misunderstood?I guess I have no words.So I write bits of what I do know, and it is the circumstances in which I read this book. I bought this book in The Strand in New York and had it on my bookshelf since April. I had just finished A start in life, also by Brookner and I didn't want to plunge into another of her novels. It is not possible to read them back to back. A few months later I took it to France but it made a poor summer read, so it came back with me, wrinkled and bruised. I began reading again after our summer routine was in place, in the evenings, on the balcony, in the warmness of August. By the time I got to the last third of the book, I was obsessed. Few writers take me out of my present to a timeless place. No references to anything that is known to me and yet a world where life is portrayed without disguise, with all the heartbreak, doubt, human drama, façades and loneliness identifiable with the world around, just as it is.I fnished it yesterday. After I closed the book, I marinated in the feeling. How is it possible that this book was written at all? The lonely sensation I used to get when I listened to an obscure band in the emptiness of an apartment, knowing for sure that I was the only one listening to it, caught up with me.Sharing this will be tough. I don't even dare to say it is a good book. There is no category or rating system that would have a place for it.
What do You think about Hotel Du Lac (1995)?
Why did I love this book? It's subtle, that's for sure. It takes place at the titular Hotel du Lac and in the mind of Edith Hope - her thoughts and feelings predominate. Edith's a fascinating character - a successful writer, lonely, financially independent but accepts the control and influence of others - well, to an extent but then rears up to jilt her fiancé or begin an affair with a married man. She encapsulates still waters run deep! So does this book - I appreciate its quiet and thoughtful
—Em
Reading this novel was my introduction to the world of Anita Brookner. Having started with Hotel du Lac, her Booker prize-winning novel, I moved on to others including Providence and Incidents in the Rue Laugier. But it was experiencing her distinctive prose style and characters with complicated emotional lives that drew me in. Hotel is written mostly in the form of musings of the protagonist and has very little overt activity. But her life is changing, partly at the suggestion of her friends and partly through her own meditations on her situation. The developments of these small changes, of her reactions to loneliness and the stigma of being unattached, are the stuff that moves a reader to think about her condition as a woman and a human being. Her choices lead to a reinvigorated self-reliance that may be difficult, but it is being true to herself. Anita Brookner's novels are short but they pack a powerful punch.
—James
About how being coupled allows one to relax and behave badly, and the good behavior expected of single women. The main character is brittle and lonely, and the tenor of everything is like "overcooked veal" but still there is something about the way the character feels uncomfortable in the world, the way she is constantly constructing an edifice to protect herself from it, that is universal. There is also a remarkable perception about the ways women engage in frippery to exclude men, for example: "It occurs to me...that some women close ranks because they hate men and fear them. Oh, I know that this is obvious. What I'm really trying to say is that I dread such women's attempts to recruit me, to make me their accomplice. I'm not talking about the feminists. I can understand their position, although I'm not all that sympathetic. I'm talking about the ultra-feminine. I'm talking about the complacent consumers of men with their complicated but unwritten rules of what is due to them. Treats. Indulgences. Privileges. The right to make illogical fusses. The cult of themselves. Such women strike me as dishonourable. And terrifying. I think perhaps that men are an easier target. I think perhaps the feminists should take a fresh look at the situation."Such clarity is all over the place, and so even though it's a sort of brutal book to read, it's worth it.It's also a hotel book, a venerable genre.
—Josie
