The Brooknerian

Susan Hill, whose lockdown reading recommendations are a weekly joy, chomps in the latest Spectator on a T-bone in her reading of American crime fiction, but finds time for the 'lobster bisque' that is an old favourite. The novels of Anita Brookner seemed to have vanished without trace but they have all now reappeared in a fine series with new cover designs. My copies were old and battered so I have bought the set, because Brookner is one of the women writers I most admire, and re-reading her in new copies helps me consider them afresh. V.S. Naipaul despised her work, probably without having read it, but that is just an added recommendation. If you have been told they are ‘all the same’ — well, only in the sense that Bach’s organ preludes or piano variations are all the same, because Brookner’s works are indeed variations on a theme. Think of them that way and her genius will reveal itself over these wonderful novels.

In Howards End is on the Landing Susan Hill reviews her collection of books. She eventually gets round to Anita Brookner's novels. Could they, she wonders, have been written by a man? Hill has no answer to this somewhat unpromising question, and indeed can offer little illumination more generally on a writer she's plainly a fan of. Counterfactuals seldom do lead anywhere very profitable. Nor it is especially fruitful to enquire into the gender profile of Brookner's readership. Brookner knew she was read by men as well as by women; the topic is covered in interview. Men probably do read her differently, but there are surely other variables to be borne in mind: race, age, sexuality, class. Ah yes, class. Do non-Brits realise how significant, how over-riding a factor social class is, even today? What was Brookner's? Or was she, as a child of immigrants, somehow outside the system? - like Kitty Maule, 'difficult to place'?