In 1984 bookmakers refused to take further bets on the winner of the Booker Prize. It was a forgone conclusion. The Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard would win … but it didn’t. The winner was a slim book of 140 pages: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. Accepting the prize, Anita Brookner said the first thing she would do with her prize money would be to have her shoes repaired. No glamour, no glitz, just sensible and so very English. Did the audience laugh I wonder or were they shell shocked into silence by the result.
Anita Brookner came quite late to fiction writing, having had a very successful career as an art historian in places of high academia; The Courtauld Institute and Cambridge University. However, when her books began to be published she found she had much to say and for a time produced a book a year. Describing this particular piece of writing, the word that comes to mind is crafted. It really is beautifully crafted, understated and written with style and a certain languid elegance.
Edith Hope, our heroine and narrator of the story, written as it is in the first person, lives a single life as a writer of romantic fiction. This is the middle of the 20th century and friends feel themselves incumbent to find her a husband. Edith has a lover whom she sees a few times a month, when he can get away from his wife and family, and she knows the relationship will never become anything more. Eventually, one feels almost because she is browbeaten, Edith accepts a proposal of marriage from a very suitable man. The word ‘suitable’ has all sorts of connotations doesn’t it and most of them are dull. There is a delightful passage where she is in a taxi on her way to the register office where the wedding party are gathered outside. She changes her mind, tells the taxi driver to keep going and waves to her friends, including the bemused, prospective groom.
In a way, the story begins here. Edith has committed an egregious social sin and everyone decides it would be best if she went away for a while. Thus she finds herself in a small Swiss hotel at the tail end of the holiday season. It is the sort of establishment that has a loyal group of visitors that return annually; people who like things to be as they have always been. Edith becomes involved in their hopes and fears and their trifling daily routines. It occurs to me that there is a large group of English writers who write controlled stories where very little seems to happen but actually lives are irrevocably changed and this is an excellent example.
Anita Brookner herself never married, saying that men expected wives to fit into the small spaces that were left available in their husbands’ lives. I have not read all her books but in this one certainly men do come off rather poorly. I had to look up the word for hatred of men and it is misandry. ( Interesting that the word ‘misogyny’ is widely known and used but ‘misandry’ not so. Material there for a long essay I think!) I’m not sure I think this is quite where Anita Brookner stood ( the problem being more with marriage then men in general) but she does raise all sorts of interesting issues between men and women, woven deep within her narrative. I think maybe my head is still full of all the outrageousness of ‘ Lessons in Chemistry’ and I’ve become quite sensitive to how these subjects are played out in fiction.
There is a marriage proposal in Switzerland but don’t get too excited, it contains no passion, romance or really even the suggestion of love. There is however a lot on offer for Edith: status, security, societal acceptance and approval. This brought to mind very quickly Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice and her marriage to the odious clergyman. ‘Poor Charlotte!’ say Jane and Elizabeth but Charlotte feels she knows exactly what she is doing and why. It might only be in this present century that the state of single women has become totally acceptable and it is hard for us to see the vulnerability of those in earlier times.
The end of this book has a jolting twist to it that is skilfully managed and written. This story is a good read. I recommend it.
Happy reading.