Altered States

Alan Sherwood, a middle-aged solicitor is spending a holiday in Vif, a somnolent village on the Franco-Swiss border. As he catches a glimpse of a woman on the platform of the station, he is reminded of Sarah Miller who he once passionately loved. Little by little the reader discovers who this woman was as Alan's recollections of his youth slowly unfold. The pattern of their relationship was quite strange because as soon as Alan saw Sarah, he knew that he should eternally seek to attract her attention. Though beautiful, Sarah was vain, unreliable, feckless, insouciant and literally unable to take any matter seriously, always eluding Alan's questions and never being quite capable of concentrating on the subject at hand. An elusive femme fatale, always expecting the world to attend to her needs, her only consistency being her extremely inconsistent nature. Perhaps that was partly why Alan was so irresistibly attracted to her. In any event Sarah never quite responded to his advances so Alan ended up by marrying Angela and in the course of the plot we discover that she died only after eleven months of marriage and after having given birth to a stillborn girl. Mrs Brookner admirably shows through the numerous characters in her novel how people's states alter depending on whether they are in love, lonely, married, young, old or, like Alan, haunted by the memory of a woman he could never possess. The maturity and the depth of the author's perceptions are mesmerising and her fiction is powerful and disturbing.

A literary tapestry of passion, obsession, melancholy and despair, Altered States cuts straight to the heart of the human condition. So resonant is this brutally poetic saga of innocence lost, the reader cannot help but to reflect upon her own experiences with tenderness and perhaps a degree of sorrow.A respected attorney and co-inheritor of the law firm of Sherwood Smith, Alan Sherwood treasures his solitude and unwavering ability to keep emotional entanglements at bay. Yet, his well-developed defenses prove useless upon his encounter with the beautiful and utterly disingenuous Sarah, his niece by way of his mother's marriage. Indeed, Sarah's capabilities for emotional indifference are a cut above Alan's own.As his obsession intensifies, Alan finds himself falling ever more deeply into the abyss until, in a moment of physical and emotional exhaustion, he surrenders. No longer able to endure the turmoil inherent within his quest for the ever-elusive Sarah, he concedes to marry Angela, a meek young woman of impeccable culinary talents with not-so-subtle domestic yearnings and a most tender soul.It is not long before the match proves tragic for all involved.Yet, this extraordinary novel is far more than a tale of unrequited love. Rather, it is an exploration into the depths of the human soul and its ability to endure - as well as to succumb.Altered States is certain to touch any reader who has experienced the exploitation of her own vulnerabilities within careless hands and has seen her beloved illusions shatter beneath the harsh light of day. She may contemplate the past with tender reminiscence yet also look ahead with a fair inkling of hope for somewhere within there resides a longing to embrace those illusions once more.

Altered States continues to haunt me two weeks after I finished it. The main character, an intelligent and prosperous British attorney, encounters a sexual obsession that has the tenacity of inexorable fate. The story is told entirely from his point of view, and it's the reader's job to decide how credible his point of view is. Brookner's writing is precise and cutting. While her conclusions about human existence are shocking, she treats her flawed characters tenderly.I'm reminded of the old Hitchcock TV shows and of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. It's a short book, very much worth reading.

Alan Sherwood is Brookner's wonderful protagonist in this tale of a man who is moved by forces beyond him. Altered States is a story of conflict between the staid, rational, traditional English ways and the more universal powers of obsessive attraction. Alan places into jeopardy everything: his career, his reputation, and his self respect for the attention of one who is just slightly out of his reach for his own good. The consequences are dire and are upon him before he can retreat. Brookner's male point of view is convincing but not flawless. Her protagonist is too observant at times, but not enough so to break credibility. This is a great read!

Alan Sherwood, to the unknowing observer, would appear the typical, traditional bachelor- staid, set in his ways, a traditionalist....pompous, even! Yet Alan has loved, been briefly married and then widowed, and has been subject to a passion strong enough to have dominated and directed much of his life. This is a book about human relationships...about the mother son relationship, about husband wife relationship, about friendship...and, of course, about romantic love. It is a story with no happy ending, for the characters, as in real life, firmly refuse to be puppets to an overall stringpuller, displaying a will and direction each to this own. Above all, this is a book about growing old, the stage of life each of us will reach, if we are lucky, if we are careful, and which each of us must decide how to handle. I enjoy novels written in the first person, and I found Anita Brookner's decison to write from the male viewpoint a satisfying way to have this story told. I related to Alan, and to his mother,and to poor Angela, and to upright, so correct Aubrey and to desperate Jenny. even to the feckless, willful, soul-destroying Sara. In fact, I could identify them from among my aquaintances right now..or point them out in the street tomorrow. I see that another reviewer complains that the story and characters are unresolved....but that is also the point of this tale.. the people in our lives don't always accept the roles we've assigned them...and often, if they do accept, they don't play their parts as well as we'd like.... But life's like that, isn't it....doesn't always `go by the book'....not like a a Mills & Boon, anyway... But for a feel of the real thing, read `Altered States'. And read it slowly....it's too beautifully crafted a novel for skimming! Robin Knight