Background
Brookner was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.
( Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to...)
Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is a poignant novella from Anita Brookner. 'I rather hope I shall die at the hairdresser's, for they are bound to know what to do. At least that is what I tell myself.' Solitude is a familiar burden for Elizabeth Warner. She lives in a basement flat near Victoria and leaves the house only to go shopping and to have her hair done - until a chance encounter at the hairdresser's brings unexpected change. At the Hairdresser's is a deeply moving, unflinchingly observed story about trust and betrayal by one of the greatest writers of contemporary fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0069YVY1A/?tag=2022091-20
(Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, se...)
Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, sensibly clad in his Burberry raincoat and walking shoes, a man thinks he may be looking at the woman for whom he ruined his life many years earlier. Alan Sherwood, a quiet English solicitor, remembers back to a time when he stepped briefly out of character to indulge in a liaison with Sarah Miller, an intriguing but heartless distant relative--only to find himself in a series of absurd situations that culminated in his marriage to Sarah's clinging, childlike friend Angela. With her compassionate portrait of a man who has paid a terrible price for his folly, Anita Brookner gives us a novel that it at once harrowing and humane. In the traditions of Henry James and Thomas Mann, Altered States is a beautifully rendered tale of loneliness, guilt, and erotic obsession.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008IU9V2C/?tag=2022091-20
(Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s Lond...)
Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s London. Elizabeth, prudent and introspective, values social propriety. Betsy, raised by a spinster aunt, is open, trusting, and desperate for affection. After growing up and going their separate ways, the two women reconnect later in life. Elizabeth has married kind but tedious Digby, while Betsy is still searching for love and belonging. In this deeply perceptive story, Anita Brookner brilliantly charts the resilience of a friendship tested by alienation and by jealousy over a man who seems to offer the promise of escape.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400075300/?tag=2022091-20
(At the heart of Anita Brookner's new novel lies a double ...)
At the heart of Anita Brookner's new novel lies a double mystery: What has happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman of a certain age who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice? As Brookner reconstructs Anna's life and character through the eyes of her acquaintances, she gives us a witty yet ultimately devastating study of self-annihilating virtue while exposing the social, fiscal, and moral frauds that are the underpinnings of terrifying rectitude.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679743081/?tag=2022091-20
(A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes th...)
A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes the opportunity to share in the joys and pleasures of the lives of a glittering couple, only to find her hopes of companionship and happiness shattered. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679738134/?tag=2022091-20
(In one of her most delicate and suspenseful novels to dat...)
In one of her most delicate and suspenseful novels to date, Anita Brookner brings us an exquisite story of friendship and duty. Rachel Kennedy and Oscar Livingston were not precisely friends or family. Rachel had been acquanted with Oscar for some time, first as her fatherâs accountant, and then as her own. Part owner of a London bookshop, Rachel is thoroughly independent and somewhat distant, determinedly restrained in her feelings for others, but above all responsible. And it is this trait that leads Oscar and his wife Dorrie to seek out Rachel as a mentor for their twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Heather. Yet when Heather seems poised to make an unsuitable romantic decision, Rachel decides to speak out and intervene, causing an unwitting and devastating insight.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400095212/?tag=2022091-20
(In her superbly accomplished novel, Anita Brookner proves...)
In her superbly accomplished novel, Anita Brookner proves that she is our most 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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008LMEA82/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679759328/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375501894/?tag=2022091-20
novelist art historian university professor writer
Brookner was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.
She was educated at the private James Allen"s Girls" School.
She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Manitoba Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac. Personal life
She was the only child of Newson Bruckner, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, and Maude Schiska, a singer whose father had emigrated from Poland and founded a tobacco factory.
Maude changed the family"s surname to Brookner because of anti-German sentiment in Britain.
In 1949 she received a Bachelor in History from King"s College London, and in 1953 a doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. = As academic In 1967 she became the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge University.
She was promoted to Reader at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1977, where she worked until her retirement in 1988. She was a Fellow of King"s College London and of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
= As novelist Already a published author of nonfiction, Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life (1981), at the age of 53.
Thereafter, she published roughly a novel a year. Brookner was highly regarded as a stylist. Her novels explore themes of emotional loss and difficulties associated with fitting into society, and typically depict intellectual, middle-class women, who suffer isolation and disappointments in love.
Many of Brookner"s characters are the children of European immigrants to Britain.
A number appear to be of Jewish descent. 1990 Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Commander of the Order of the British Empire).
(At the heart of Anita Brookner's new novel lies a double ...)
(In her superbly accomplished novel, Anita Brookner proves...)
(A lonely art historian absorbed in her research seizes th...)
(Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, se...)
(In one of her most delicate and suspenseful novels to dat...)
(Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s Lond...)
( Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to...)
