Incidents in the Rue Laugier

When your mother laments days of French aristocracy and raises you to respectability, you rebel by choosing an English cad. Meanwhile, a respectable, bookish man yearns for you. Maud Gonthier, like Emma Bovary, confuses respectability with boredom, but unlike Emma, Maud manages to survive the folly of her desires and whims. Maud is intensely likeable in this protrait told by her daughter.

Despite her Poe-like title, Brookner is more like a compact Henry James. She writes novels about romance, but she is far from being a romance novelist. The two main characters in this story, as she points out in the very first chapter, do not quite live "happily ever after" but instead find stability, accommodation, and a kind of contentment. It is, in fact, the portrait of a marriage that lasts, deliberately contrasted with the torrid sexuality and unfocused idealism of youth. The "incidents" of the title refer to six weeks spent in a Paris apartment by Maud Gonthier, the refined and hitherto restrained product of a French convent school, David Tyler, her charismatic but amoral first lover, and Edward Harrison, his middle-of-the-road hanger-on. When Tyler splits, it is Harrison who picks up the pieces. The motives for his proposal of marriage and her acceptance of it are not entirely clear, though, and while these ambiguities may be the true subject of the book, they also make a curiously unstable foundation upon which to erect such a structure. But the people are very real, and their situation will speak to many of us looking back on our youth from later life.I have now read three Brookner novels:  HOTEL DU LAC , her most famous, and  LEAVING HOME , which I also reviewed on Amazon. Her subject may be a restricted one -- let us call it the Beauty of Loss -- but she treats it like a poet. She writes romances that do not quite end happily ever after, but romances nonetheless. Her protagonists, all women, are generally beyond their first youth, but they are by no means beyond feeling. Her settings involve subtle shifts of place and time -- the slightly old-fashioned Swiss hotel in HOTEL DU LAC is a case in point -- which blur the stories slightly like a charcoal drawing or pastel. But while her characters may have brushed against a dream, they all return to the real world with a self-knowledge and acceptance that I personally find very beautiful.

For fans of Anita Brookner, this one is almost the best. Did not find it depressing at all, on the contrary. The elegance and persuasiveness of the language is sheer pleasure, not a single false note in the characters. Ms. Brookner is a genius, ranks up there with Virginia Woolf.

I didn't find this depressing at all. It certainly isn't ... and they lived happily ever after, but it's Anita Brookner. She muses on honest life experiences and how they may impact us. Love her writing. What I enjoy most about her writing, and this book in particular, is that I felt I was being shown what folly we can make of our lives, but fortunately was merely an observer to the events, not a participant. Love Anita Brookner's style. This is the third or fourth book of hers that I've read and have enjoyed them all.

This novel was truly depressing. It was all about the childhood dreams of the two main characters, Maud and Edward, and how their small dreams never came to fruition. Throughout the book the characters strive for and constantly fall short of what they desire, which in both cases is freedom and love. Neither can relate to the other which leaves them both emotionally stunted and unable to fully enjoy what should be a good life together. One of the biggest problems I had with the book was the timescale. It seemed to me that the dates given really didn't match with the attitudes or style of living described in the book. I fully believed that the book was taking place around the early 20th century and was shocked when it finally declared itself to be set in 1971. All in all this is not a bad book, although I myself did not really care for it. It is well written and the story is interesting, although depressing and tragic. Incidents in the Rue Laugier seems to me to be a bitter book written about lives lived in dissatisfaction and regret. By the end of this book, I have to admit that I was really depressed and disliked the characters intensely. I could not empathise with them at all. However, by the fact that it left me sad and angry it is clear that it certainly made an emotional impact on me.

I am simply a fan. This is a terrific book.

Quelle classe dans l'écriture! Aucun roman d'Anita Brookner n'a apporté de déception. A lire en anglais, bien sûr: c'est un régal. C'est de la littérature.

Another journey into the human psyche. Anita Brookner was a master at making the reader interested in her characters. I found myself totally immersed in the story of Maud, a young French woman, and Edward Harrison, a stoic Englishman and his irresponsible and capricious friend David Tyler. Tyler and Harrison are in Paris when they are invited to spend a long weekend at the home of Maud's aunt, Germaine along with Nadine, Maud's mother. What occurs will have an impact on the rest of their lives. Maud and Edward eventually marry, a marriage of convenience. But the shadow of Tyler is always evident.The story is told through the eyes of Mary Françoise, a daughter born late in marriage to the hapless couple. She finds her mother's notebook with just one entry....A tale of inadequacy, disappointment and loss that is beautifully structured. Brookner's observations are perfect when writing about relationships. I enjoyed Incidents in the Rue Laugier.

Great - thanks