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Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner6/10/2023 ![]() Consistently undervaluing their own considerable talents and professional achievements, these heroines look to love and marriage as a way of joining the cosmic dance of a rational, well-ordered society. Like the shopgirls and “ultrafeminine” women they gaze upon with such wonder and awe, these intellectually and morally superior women accept without question the cultural assumption that marriage is a woman’s greatest good. ![]() With compassion, rue, and infinite good humor, Brookner makes it abundantly clear that these worthy women, these good daughters, good writers, and good scholars, are unknowing adherents to a romantic ideal. While these women are intelligent, endlessly introspective, and possessed of a saving ironic wit, they do not know how to get the things they most desire: the love of, and marriage to, a man of quality. As their stories begin, they seek change, liberation from boredom and loneliness. ![]() None of these heroines has intended a life so circumscribed. Each centers on a scholarly, sensitive, morally earnest young woman who leads an attenuated life. Written in austerely elegant prose, each of these four novels follows essentially the same course. ![]() Anita Brookner (16 July 1928 – 10 March 2016) established her reputation as a novelist with four books published in rapid succession from 1981 to 1984. ![]()
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