The Brooknerian

I had no doubt that in the ballrooms of his youth the Colonel had been noted for his charm and his way with women. It was a style which he had carefully taught his son, who had never, as far as I could remember, uttered a serious word. Badinage was obviously the favoured means of exchange in the Sandberg establishment. A Friend from England , ch. 5 This is a serious condemnation. Brookner hates the Sandbergs, with their plausibility, their polished manners, their uncertain income, their slippery identity, their sibilant speech: most of all she hates them for their jokiness. One thinks of Paul Sturgis in Strangers , longing for the sort of proper conversation he loved in the books of his youth: Werther , Adolphe ( Strangers , ch. 7), but having to make do with 'opacity', 'social niceness'. Rachel in A Friend from England is a different proposition: she long ago decided to live her life on the surface ( A Friend from England , ch. 5). But discussion of the 'inn...