Hotel
du Lac by Anita Brookner
I
am so happy that the Booker Project introduced me to Anita Brookner. I was
already biased in favor of this book before even opening it, because it has a
French title. Then I started reading it and fell in love. I felt like I was
reading a Carol Shields novel set in Switzerland instead of North America.
Edith
Hope, author of romance novels, arrives at the Hotel du Lac in disgrace – but we
will not learn why until about two-thirds of the way through the book. Meanwhile,
she observes the women around her – for the hotel is mainly populated by women.
They all seem to conform to a type at first, but all present some sort of surprise
by the end. There are the mother-daughter pair whose ages keep having to be revised
upward, the elderly lady abandoned by her son, and a wraith with an eating
disorder and a pocket pooch.
The
vacation-cum-exile atmosphere is slightly surreal, reminding me of Stanley Middleton’s
Holiday, also about a character who
has extracted himself from relationship trouble to gain perspective.
I
won’t spoil anything, but I feel the ending was rushed. I wish this book had
been twice as long, allowing Edith’s own romance, and character, more time to
bloom. But I will definitely be reading more Anita Brookner.
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