A Misalliance: Far Gone

He is far gone, she thought.

A Misalliance, ch. 11

Early Brookner, later Brookner. What are the differences? Chapter 11 of A Misalliance comprises a three-way conversation between Blanche, her ex-husband, and her old admirer Patrick Fox. The tone, typical of the early novels, is witty, comic, sarcastic, aphoristic. It reads a little like Wilde or Coward.

And Patrick Fox's love with Sally, one of the novel's several unsuitable attachments, is played for laughs. But fast-forward just a few years to A Private View, and we have George Bland and his obsession with Katy Gibb - and few laughs, and no repartee. A Misalliance summarises several early Brookner themes - flirting with other lives, mismatched pairs - but we must look to later novels for truly serious analysis.