Meticulous, Impeccable and Full of Simple Grace

Further to earlier posts (here and here) on Brookner's writing style, I note a review from 2009 of Strangers in the Oxford Mail (see here):

Since the perfection of her grammar and use of language is a subject often commented on by reviewers ('Brookner’s writing is meticulous, impeccable and full of simple grace,' Sunday Times) I cannot resist pointing out that on the evidence of Strangers she does not know the meaning of either ‘dilemma’ (page 25) or ‘fulsome’ (pages 37 and 44). I would also suggest there is an otiose comma in her brief author’s note: 'All the characters in this novel are imaginary. But I do not doubt that somewhere, out there, they, or others like them, exist.'

Dilemma

There are five examples of the word in Strangers (none of them on p. 25 of the British edition). The reviewer's complaint appears to centre on Brookner's use of the word to mean 'difficult situation or problem' rather than 'a situation in which a choice must be made between two or more unfavourable possibilities'. A true pedant, defining dilemma, would insist on only two alternatives.

Fulsome

'...he hoped that the call would not be answered, so that he could leave a message of fulsome good wishes which involved no loss of face.'

'"...How nice to hear from you." He could hear himself becoming fulsome...'

I refer to Kingsley Amis in his book on style, The King's English (1997):

This once useful word meant 'disgustingly excessive, cloying' as applied to compliments, apologies, etc.; Roget lists it between gushing and stagy. Undereducated persons, perhaps foggily supposing fulsome to be a posh form of full (from which it does partly descend), have in recent years taken to using it to mean 'ample' or possibly 'cordial'. Not to be used henceforth by careful writers.

I think we can absolve Brookner in the second quote.

The otiose comma

Comma use fries my brain, and when using MS Word I am often at odds with its schoolmasterly admonishments. But I can't begin to understand what the Oxford Mail reviewer means here. 'An' otiose comma? Brookner's sentence contains two pairs of commas. One or even both pairs might be removed (though with considerable loss of clarity), but not a single comma. I reckon Brookner got it right.