The Next Big Thing: Memento Mori

Liliane Louvel's scholarly essay 'Reading with Images: Anita Brookner's The Next Big Thing as Memento Mori' is recommended. It takes an 'intermedial' view of the novel, comparing it with a range of memento mori artworks. The essay sheds fresh light on several key relationships in the book - with Herz's brother and with his neighbour Sophie Clay. It is heartening to find such a sympathetic and respectful reading of a Brookner novel, and intriguing that it comes from outside the anglophone literary world.