The Brooknerian

Fraud , Anita Brookner's twelfth novel, was published in 1992. I was then, I guess, in the early stages of my fandom. I ordered the book from the library I worked in part-time, was first on the waiting list. When I met Anita Brookner by chance (or design - see here ) a month or so later I was able to tell her I'd finished her latest. She was, I recall, surprised. 'Already?' she said. Even then, and in spite of the training I was receiving at the hands of my university tutors, I was always on the lookout for parallels between an author's life and works. Fraud struck me as rather interestingly close. The physical description of Anna Durrant in chapter 1, for example, could be of Brookner herself. And then there's the proximity of Anna's and Brookner's flats. Anna moves to Cranley Gardens, a mere stone's throw across the Fulham Road from Elm Park Gardens. All of which lent a frisson to my first reading of Fraud . Beginning a reread, all these yea...

The best sure cure for homesickness, which can strike at any point on a foreign holiday, is a detective story. I shall unashamedly take Patricia Highsmith, whom I am re-reading, and who does not seem to date in the very least, and hope that Ripley - her amoral character - will give me the independence to sail through any uncomfortable encounter. I shall also take Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton , which is a kind of detective story, and read breathlessly until the new owner of the property is revealed. 'Holiday Reading', Observer , 4 July 1993 I've mentioned The Spoils of Poynton before. I vaguely remember Brookner saying she reread it regularly, even annually, marvelling at its technical qualities. But I've never found the reference. Perhaps this is what I remember, though I didn't take the Observer in those days. The Spoils of Poynton is one of James's transitional works, the first or one of the first of the later 1890s novels he wrote after ...

Some obvious and not so obvious ideas for a winter break... St-Sulpice, Paris Paris is classic Brookner territory, but where to go? The rue Laugier? The old Bibliothèque Nationale, where a young Brookner was once the recipient of a magnificent bunch of flowers? The Luxembourg Gardens, to sit on an iron chair? The Crillon, where, according to Julian Barnes, Brookner was given a maid's room? No, head for the Latin Quarter and the church of St-Sulpice. Once inside, look carefully around the gloomy interior for Delacroix's Jacob and the Angel . It will help if you have a copy handy of Brookner's masterpiece, The Next Big Thing . Hyde Park, London Perhaps you want to re-enact Frances Hinton's nightmarish trek across the park and down the Edgware Road towards Maida Vale in Look at Me ? Or, for brighter moments, you might wish to drive through the park, like Mrs May on that heady summer evening in Visitors ? Hyde Park has it all. Poor Claire Pitt in Undue Influence even...

John Bayley, old-style gentleman of letters, consort to Iris Murdoch, controversial chronicler of her decline, cuts a not wholly satisfactory figure in the Brookner literature. He's a fan, but he's more of a fan of the likes of Barbara Pym and Jane Austen, and this pushes his Brookner criticism a little off centre. Here he is in the Guardian in December 2003, yet again getting it just that little bit wrong: Anita Brookner is on top form with The Rules of Engagement , which carries a plot line as strong as any of Jane Austen's (after reading a Brookner I always want to re-read a Barbara Pym and I chose her last and in some ways best, A Few Green Leaves )...  

In Brookner's  Hotel du Lac Edith Hope picks up a volume of short stories, the 'beautifully named' Ces plaisirs, qu’on nomme, à la légère, physiques . Colette, she reflects, will see her through: 'that sly old fox'. Asked by John Haffenden whether Colette's book had significance for her, Brookner replied, 'Only the title.' It was Colette's extreme adamantine viability that attracted her. She admired the author as all the characters in her own fiction flock to those on whom the gods smile and who have the gift of living successfully. Colette's 'virility', her 'innocent' sensuality, are themes in Brookner's piece in the  Observer  in March 1991 on Herbert Lottman's biography of the writer. But as ever with Brookner's reviews of such works, some hesitation is evident as to the validity or even the decency of the art of biography: Her life is contained in all her works, where it is described with exquisite discretio...

There are in this world of ours many separate fandoms, and sometimes they overlap. Often they overlap fairly predictably. So an Anita Brookner fan is probably also going to be at least some sort of a devotee of Henry James (that's me) or Edith Wharton (not me). Other authors who crop up in this regard include Barbara Pym (a not too enormous yes) and Jane Austen (ditto), writers whose world views perhaps aren't quite so aligned with Brookner's. But the coincidences I look for are the stranger ones. Who would have thought the fandoms of Anita Brookner and, for example, Doctor Who might converge? But I find more than a few folk. Myself included. There - I trust I've succeeded in surprising you. I have other enthusiasms. But I have yet to find Brookner fans who are also, say, Kingsley Amis fans or fans of certain 1980s sitcoms. But I live in hope.

One can easily imagine Anita Brookner meeting someone like Edith Templeton in somewhere like Bordighera. But Brookner and Catherine Cookson? They never actually met, but they might have. But we know Brookner read her - once. That alone inspires astonishment (and gives her an advantage over me). I read one of her novels, which ran to over 500 pages, and did not entirely manage to crack the code of its popularity, but then the novel was not intended for soft southerners. I found it artless, seamlessly written, and plotted only in the sense that everything came out right in the end, yet I could see that it possessed a certain transparency which would inspire trust and loyalty in her readers. Observer , 27 November 1988 Cookson's stories, Brookner goes on to say, are 'for the public library, destined to be read at home on a quiet afternoon', and indeed it was during my own library years that I came across Cookson. For those who do not now recognise the name, Catherine Co...