A number of her novels begin in a notional present and then move into the past. By the end the narrative has returned to the beginning. The ending isn't perhaps in a lot of doubt, though there may be shocks and surprises along the way. Falling Slowly is an example of this kind of novel.
Others - A Private View, for example - are presented more chronologically. George Bland has his adventure, and at the end at least a version of the status quo is restored.
At the sentence level, several of the novels attempt a moment of epiphany (e.g. Fraud), often delivering a not always persuasive, or earned, sense of hope (Leaving Home ends like this).
What we don't find, except possibly in Incidents in the Rue Laugier, is (Middlemarch-style) a rundown of the Nachgeschichte, details of the various characters' ultimate fates.
Aspects of Brookner's practice, then, are more modern, and less traditional, than we might suppose.
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So irrelevant did her death seem that I almost looked forward to discussing it with her, felt something like a quickening of interest. 'What was it like?' I should have asked. 'Not all that bad,' I can hear her say in her most famously throw-away tone. 'You might give it a try one of these days.'
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