The Brooknerian

From the terse to the lyrical, Anita Brookner’s opening lines are often memorable. A Start in Life (1981) Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. With concision and aplomb Brookner sets out her stall. This is how to get yourself noticed. Brief Lives (1990) Julia died. I read it in The Times this morning. My French friend, Marie , never a Brookner fan, disliked Brief Lives , especially the opening; she objected to its bleakness and negativity. ‘Yes – and?’ I probably replied. It’s certainly a startling start to a novel, and if this almost gnomic line hasn’t found its way on to a T-shirt somewhere, then someone is missing a trick. Incidents in the Rue Laugier (1995) My mother read a lot, sighed a lot, and went to bed early. A beautiful, rhythmic sentence, with Proustian resonances – and that second comma is surely the mark of a stylist (Brookner, in one of her book reviews, praises an author’s use of such a comma). O...