David Copperfield's Words

And so, to borrow David Copperfield's words, I lost her.

The Bay of Angels, Ch. 15

Zoe's mother dies, of course, just as Jane's mother also died in A Family Romance. In both novels the narrator conjures David Copperfield's words. Is this self-plagiarism? Or is it a reward for the attentive Brooknerian reader? I think the latter. Reading of Zoe's plight, one is reminded of Jane's and in turn of David Copperfield's. One has a sense of being some kind of honoured guest in the rambling mansion block that is Anita Brookner's fiction, or in the great house that is English literature itself.