The Brooknerian

There are problems in Brookner's work: her attitude towards narrative point of view, for example. Let's consider, for instance, focalisation, the angle of vision through which a story is focused. It – along with its derivative, focaliser – is a modern term; Henry James spoke of reflectors. Brookner tends to switch among three methods: the first-person narrator; the third person narrator with a single focaliser (i.e. when everything in the novel is filtered through that character's consciousness, with no access possible to the thoughts and impressions of other people); and, lastly, the third-person narrator with access to the thoughts and feelings of a range of (though not all) characters. An example of this last method is Fraud , in which each chapter is given over to a particular focaliser. The characters to whose impressions the reader has no recourse are, importantly, those bold predators with whom the author has no empathy, though perhaps a lot of sympathy: the volcani...