A Private View

George Bland has planned to spend his retirement in leisurely travel and modest entertainment with his friend Michael Putnam. However when Putnam dies George has to try to impose some purpose on his solitary life. One day a lady of about thirty-five, Katy Gibb, appears as a temporary resident of a neighbouring flat. She claims to be acquainted with the owners' apartment, the Dunlops, although nobody in the house has been notified of Katy's arrival. She is a greedy, selfish, alluring and manipulative person and she immediately exerts a strange influence on George. Because of Katy George is forced to acknowledge that his fastidious and careful life so far has shown the evident lack of passion and daring. As this realization takes hold, George has to decide how much - or how little - he is willing to do to transform the satus quo. Anita Brookner explores the complications that arise when one solitary man comes up against a woman who seems determined to invade his solitude. The main character is an ageing bachelor whose existence has been virtually a mirror image of his name. But can Katy's presence really change his character or is there an age when one his past changing?

Anita Brookner knows how to focus her readers' attention powerfully on the principal characters of her books. In this regard her skills are akin to those of an immense magnifying glass which condense the sun's wide rays into a small hot center of light: after a few chapters, her characters burst into flame under the steady gaze of the reader's scrutiny. George Bland of "A Private View" is one of those. Though he appears to live a dull and uninteresting life, the author's examination of why he does so makes for heartily provocative perusal. This novel is written in the grand tradition of other books which explore the carnival folly of desperate old age willing to immolate itself on the indifferent bonfires of youth. One is reminded of Thomas Mann's "The Death in Venice," for example. Some of the usual Brookner appetizers and entrees are on offer here: the intense internal monologue; the snake oil placebo of tea for what ails; the visits to the shops when boredom constricts; the useless days of people who have nothing to do and no one to do it with. After cavorting for awhile with George Bland and other Brookner pals, one may begin to think of England as a place inhabited solely by elderly people crushed under the weight of gargantuan checkbooks and pointless days. But it is the author's vivisectional analysis of what makes such people tick, persued with rather gleeful abandon, that makes for such riveting reading. This reviewer's advice: spend some time with George Bland and his funky fascination, Katy Gibb. One or the other of them may leave you reaching for the bicarbonate of soda, but their unsettling company is absolutely worth the experience.