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Strangers (2009)

by Anita Brookner(Favorite Author)

3.39 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1905490429 (ISBN13: 9781905490424)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Fig Tree

review 1: I don't know how 85 year old Anita Brookner has written over two dozen novels and not slit her wrists in the process. I love an introspective writer, and Brookner is certainly that, but surely she could find SOMETHING positive to contemplate. "The interval of true innocence was, he knew, that brief moment before the onset of disappointment, which in his parents' case was compounded by loneliness...grim and unhappy as they were, [they] had remained faithful to the married state." The aging narrator is just as negative about his own relationships - "The facts were unavoidable: she was no longer desirable, and he had never overcome his initial disadvantages. And that they were old, and that this condition was irremediable...love was by this stage somewhat superfluous, in ... morethe sense that it had taken place already. There was no need to go down that road again."
review 2: I found that this book did not live up to the glowing reviews printed on the back cover, especially the review that described it as funny. On the whole the book was slow moving, melancholic, and oddly written. The text was more prose than story which left me reading sentences again and again attempting to dissect what exactly was meant as passages were often muddled and confusing. I also found it impossible to like the main or supporting characters. less

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