In her superbly accomplished new novel, Anita Brookner proves that she is our mast profound observer of women's lives, posing questions about feminine identity and desire with a stylishness that conveys an almost sensual pleasure.From the moment Jane Manning first meets her aunt Dolly, she is both fascinated and appalled. Where Jane is tactful and shy, Dolly is flamboyant and unrepentantly selfish, a connoisseur of fine things, an exploiter of wealthy people. But as the exigencies of family bring Jane and Dolly together, Brookner shows us that we may end up loving people we cannot bring ourselves to like -- and that this paradox makes love all the more precious and miraculous. Views: 48
Brookner explores the complications that arise when one solitary man comes up against a woman who seems determined to invade his solitude. George Bland is an aging bachelor whose existence has been virtually a mirror image of his name--up until now. For into George's life walks Katy Gibb, young, abrasively self-assured, who incites in George the most alarming feelings. Views: 48
At the age of 16, it's standard procedure for every girl at Lynnie Russo's posh Los Angeles prep school to get a car. So on her 16th birthday, Lynnie is startled when she opens the small gift box from her father--it doesn't contain the shiny new set of keys she was expecting. Instead she finds a worn-out bird charm bracelet. What can he be thinking? When she cuts school to go try surfing so as to have a special day, instead of grounding her, her father hands her a manuscript box and says, "Your mother wanted you to have this when it seemed you were losing perspective. I think now's the time."Through "The Noah Confessions," Lynnie uncovers her family's secrets, loves, and tragedies, and comes to recognize that their past may not necessarily determine her future.From the Hardcover edition. Views: 47
General Bottando can't believe his rotten luck. He has just been promoted--to a position that's heavy on bureaucratic duties-but disturbingly light on investigative responsibilities. As if that wasn't annoying enough, he's received a tip about a planned raid at a nearby monastery. He's relying on his colleague Flavia di Stefano and her art-expert fiancé, Jonathan Argyll, to thwart the plot-but both are beyond baffled. The only valuable item in the monastery's art collection is a supposed Caravaggio that's currently being restored. There are no solid suspects-unless you count the endearing art thief, the flagrantly flamboyant "Rottweiler of Restoration," and the strangely shady icon expert. And there's really no reason to cause an unholy uproar-until someone commits an unconscionable crime... Views: 47
Talented, well trained and confident in his own abilities and worth, Australia's first government architect was also hot-headed and tactless. Sentenced to death for forgery, then granted a last-minute reprieve, Francis Greenway was transported to New South Wales in 1814. Within a single eventful decade, Greenway's and Governor Lachlan Macquarie's transformation of Sydney from a ramshackle convict garrison into an elegant city was well under way with buildings like the Hyde Park Barracks, St James' Church, Supreme Court and Windsor courthouse. Award-winning author Alasdair McGregor – in the first biography of Greenway since 1953 – scrutinises the life and work of a man beset by contradictions and demons. He profiles Greenway's landmark buildings, his meteoric rise and his complex and fraught relationship with Governor Macquarie, along with his thwarted ambitions and self-destruction. All played out in a fledgling colony in the throes of change from far-flung gaol to... Views: 47
"She was a dangerous girl and people think she'll be a dangerous woman." Nonie Blake is back home from a mental institution where she has spent the last twenty years, and people in Jarrett Creek are worried. Maybe too worried, for within a week of her return, Nonie is murdered. Chief Samuel Craddock thinks the only possible suspects are members of her tight-lipped family. Ever since Nonie tried to kill her sister when she was fourteen and was sent away to the institution, the family has kept to itself. Clues are scarce and Craddock is stumped. So he checks with therapists at the mental hospital to see whether they can add anything useful to his investigation. But he discovers that she has not been there for ten years. Now Craddock has to find out where Nonie has been all this time. Soon Craddock finds himself dealing not only with murder, but layers of deception and secrets, and in the midst of it all--a new deputy, one Maria Trevino, sent by... Views: 46
In one of his Independent pieces Miles Kington once referred to a volume of Edward Lear's limericks translated into French. Not an easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'.Alphonse Allais has been described as the greatest humorous writer ever. In the words of Lisa Appignanesi, 'Allais was a consummate absurdist. From an ordinary phenomenon, simple sentiment or situation, he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre and most unexpected result ... His humour kept all Paris, high and low, waiting breathlessly for the paper which would carry his next tale ...'On first publication, in 1976, Clive James in the Observer said 'Allais has been dead 70 years but his mocking tone ensures him a permanently relevant... Views: 46
In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal. With a new introduction by novelist and GP, Gavin Francis. Views: 45
Facing life alone at an advanced age, Julius Herz cannot shake the sense that he should be elsewhere, doing other things. Walking through bustling streets that seem increasingly alien to him, he’s confronted by life’s pressing questions with an urgency he has never known before: what do we owe the people in our lives? How should we fill our days? Feeling fortified despite the growing ache in his heart, Herz finds himself also blessed with a stirring sense of exhilaration. After a lifetime of deferring to others’ stronger wills, he faces a future of possibility, the only constraint the deeply ingrained habits of his mind. Profound and deeply resonant, Making Things Better explores the quandaries of aging, longing, and self-discovery with transfixing precision and spellbinding acuity.From Publishers WeeklyMaking things better has been Julius Herz's lifelong responsibility. He is yet another character in Brookner's sepia photograph album of dutiful sons and daughters trapped by familial duties into stoic existences. Like many of her protagonists, Julius is an outsider whose assimilated Jewish parents settled in London to escape the Nazis and never really fit in. His older brother Freddy's nervous breakdown, which ended his incipient career as a concert pianist, hurled their parents into bottomless grief, and firmly placed Julius under obligation to minister to the needs of all three. Now they are all dead. At 73, retired from an undemanding and unfulfilling job and amicably divorced, Julius faces existential questions with a sense of panic. He's desperate to find a purpose for the rest of his life, to create some companionship and perhaps even intimacy, and to put an end to his lonely interior exile. Brookner's gentle exploration of Julius's emotional dilemma is pursued with exquisite precision and empathy. In her novels, fate is cruel and hope of happiness a chimera, yet her characters are so fully realized that one feels the beat of life in their veins and longs for them to yield to their stifled urge for freedom. In Julius's case, the resurgence of sexual desire and an unexpected letter from the cousin he has loved since their youth in Berlin provide insights into what he belatedly recognizes as "the fallacious enterprise of making things better." While he grasps at a last chance at happiness, the narrative becomes a meditation on the longing for love, its risks and dangers, and how its absence makes life itself null and void. If Brookner treads a small territory again and again, there is no sense of dej… vu or of staleness. She has the facility to make each of her extended character studies (this is her 21st novel) ring with psychological truth.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIn her twenty-first novel, Brookner presents yet another exquisitely rendered portrait of a deep-thinking loner well on in years who is granted startling insights into the undercurrents that have shaped his staid life. Julius Herz has exemplified obedience, uncomplainingly sacrificing even the most modest desires to meet the needs of his inept and unhappy parents and strange older brother. The family fled Germany for London once being Jewish became a liability, and somehow they never recovered from the shock of their exile, a fate seemingly avoided by Julius' glamorous aunt and her sexy and petulant daughter, Fanny, the great unrequited love of Julius' life. Now all alone after a brief marriage to a nurse, Julius struggles to maintain his dignity under the assault of age and utter solitude. Brookner is a master at depicting the stormy inner weather of an outwardly placid life, and she has conjured a munificent consciousness in Julius, a devotee of Freud who pays careful attention to his dreams and to his responses to everything from a painting by Delacroix of Jacob struggling with the angel to the "magnificent indifference of nature." As Julius mulls over his past and experiences frissons of desire when a beautiful young woman moves in downstairs, he comes to understand that he has been beguiled more by his fantasies then by his actual life, and his arduous and compelling journey of self-discovery becomes a conduit for profound reflections on what we owe others and on how we define ourselves. Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 45
