The Brooknerian

'...I'm looking at the end. The next big thing.' (Ch. 5)  ...the fallacious enterprise of making things better. (Ch. 15) The Next Big Thing is Making Things Better in the States. Why? The publishing practice of sometimes altering titles to suit a particular audience has been the topic of an earlier post (see here ), and it still intrigues me. Here both titles fit. The phrase 'making things better' is certainly noticeable for the frequency of its repetition; it appears in the text much more often than 'the next big thing'. 'Making Things Better' perhaps feels more upbeat, if also laced with irony. 'The Next Big Thing' is possibly the truer title, inasmuch as it sums up if not the main theme of the novel then certainly the plot's major thrust. But it's a brutal phrase - quite daringly inelegant. Brookner's choice of titles for her many novels never struck me as a strong point, and might even have served to put off potential re...

Some final comments on Brookner's Fraud : It's a novel about care and caring. This struck me only towards the end. Anna cares for her mother. Mrs Marsh is wary lest her own daughter become her carer (ch. 15). Even the predatory Vickie has 'a child's right to care and constant attention' (ch. 16). The novel's conclusion is markedly hard, cold, less than compassionate. Was Anna, in caring for her mother, truly a victim of fraud? I'm unconvinced by Anna in her final iteration. How long will she remain so blithe, so uncaring? Where is she now? Fraud is also a novel about food. It brings together themes from previous novels, and advances them: Anna is all but anorexic. The set-piece scene in chapter 16 - the Hallidays' dinner party - compares with the restaurant episode at the end of Look at Me . There's terrible food - a terrine, cold and slippery as ice cream - and much horrifying conversation. There may not be a revelation, but the scene is neverthe...

Why were some of Anita Brookner's novels published in the US with different titles? This seems at best a faintly disreputable practice, at worst an assault on the integrity of an already published text. I can think of other authors who have suffered the indignity, though it tends to be reserved for less thoroughgoingly literary writers (Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse). Ivy Compton-Burnett's Manservant and Maidservant was, however, given the somewhat unwieldy US title Bullivant and the Lambs . I can't think of traffic in the opposite direction, but there are probably examples. Is it a case of US publishers asserting their authority? Or are there cultural or other reasons that certain titles 'work' in Britain but not in America? A Start in Life (UK) / The Debut (US) For a novel that references Balzac, The Debut  is an interesting alternative, echoing Balzac's  Un début dans la vie . A Misalliance (UK) / The Misalliance (US) Do Americans prefer t...

Brookner's titles (and for this post American titles are also considered) are a mixed bag. Classically, novel titles referred to people and places ( Clarissa , The Small House at Allington ) or derived from quotations ( Pride and Prejudice , Far From the Madding Crowd ). References to themes and plot points ( Great Expectations , The Moonstone ) were less common. More figurative titles crept in after James. Names Lewis Percy (1989) Dolly (1993) Places Hotel du Lac (1984) A Friend from England (1987) Incidents in the Rue Laugier (1995) The Bay of Angels (2001) 'At the Hairdresser's' (2011) Quotations A Start in Life / The Debut (1981) (Cf. Balzac's novel of the same name) A Misalliance (1986) (Cf. Maupassant's 'Mesalliance') Brief Lives (1990) A Closed Eye (1991) A Family Romance (1993) Falling Slowly (1998) Abstract nouns Providence (1982) Fraud (1992) Plural nouns Latecomers (1988) Visitors (1997) Strangers (2009...