Dolly (Vintage Contemporaries)

Brookner has an amazing style - she is able to draw you in to a suffocating world of stultifying decorum and actually make you (sort of) enjoy it. As far as I can tell there is no sex in the Brookner world - although there's an awful lot of attempted seductions. Here it's Dolly as the seductress and a pretty unattractive spectacle she is - selfish to the extreme and completely incapable of any sort of empathy. The book is written from the 18-yr old Jane's point of view, but she seems awfully mature for her age. With her brash youth one wishes that she could just tell Dolly precisely what she thinks of her instead of making perpetual excuses. The trip to Bournemouth is the last straw - Dolly uses Jane just to get a ticket, then drops her the moment they arrive! That is what makes the end so touching and surprising - one sees that Jane has a very big heart and an appreciation for those people who are her exact opposite (and how many of us can claim that virtue!). I heard this on audio in an absolutely brilliant reading by Fiona Shaw - her enunciation is superb and she really gets to the depth of each scene. Mrs B could not have asked for a better reader! Brookner really captures British middle class society in all its wooden stolidity!

The beginning of this novel was difficult, dry and slow-paced. It struck me at first as one of Anita Brookner's less successful efforts, a novel that made me understand why she has her detractors. But I kept reading and am glad I did.The ending is powerful, disturbing and shocking, pulling the slow opening into focus. The psychological nuances are eerie, yet we know as the story ends that they're not only possible, but true. This is one of those books that makes the implausible absolutely true and inevitable. Dolly is a tale of love and symbiosis and as elegant and frightening as the work of Henry James.