Leaving Home

This is a short and well written story by Brookner, similar in style to some of her other novels. Anita Brookner (born 1928) is an English novelist and art historian. She was born in London to Polish immigrant parents. Many of her novels feature links to other European countries and immigrants to the UK. Brookner was an only child and she never married. In her novels, many of her protagonists lead a solitary life, going through stages of emotional development. For example, her Booker novel Hotel du lac is about a novelist, Edith Hope, who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. The book follows that pattern: she gets involved with the other guests and undergoes emotional changes. Also, her parents were secular Jews, and a few of her characters have Jewish connections. Without giving away the plot, the present novel follows the pattern of a single woman, again an only child, who grows up in London and moves to Paris. There are few moments of high anxiety in the story. It is low key but well written and concise. I liked her prose and would recommend the book. She is similar to a few other English writers such a Barbara Pym, but not identical. I am not surprised that some readers do not like the book. It is to be read and enjoyed for the writing as much as anything.

Classic Brookner. A reclusive, bookish, widowed mother. An introspective, timid, sheltered daughter. The little lives they lead enabled by lack of monetary worries and no real need to "do" much of anything save remain intropective. Emma wanders between Paris and London and falls into whatever situations / lodgings / friendships present themselves most conveniently to her. She's working on a book about classical garden design but remains oddly apart from anything lively and flourishing. She exists in a sort of gray vacuum. Boredom / ennui / lack of motivation is the theme. Even April in Paris can't jog Emma fully awake. Whatever. Reading Brookner is ultimately therapeutic. One's own little life always appears ever so much "more" after doing so. Thank you, Anita.

The title and back cover of Anita Brookner's novel suggest that this is about the perennial adolescent drama of breaking away from parental influences and leaving the nest. But this is only a small part of it. Emma Roberts, though younger than most of Brookner's protagonists, is already in her mid-twenties, and her quest is more a search for home than the leaving of it. She begins by moving to Paris as a graduate student of landscape architecture, staying first of all in a horrible student hostel, then taking a room in a small hotel. Later, she buys her own flat in London, and alternates between the two cities, discovering more about herself, even if only by coming to accept what she is not. The one home that she really envies is a country house belonging to the mother of her vivacious friend Françoise -- although the world of the French haute bourgeoisie makes her feel unworthy by comparison. I suspect that this novel is more autobiographical than most; it also has personal resonances for me, since I was working on my own art history thesis in Paris at a similar age. Although I am a man, while Brookner writes so tellingly about women, I treasure her insight into the female mind. It is true that she confines herself to women of a certain class and mental disposition but, for me, that only increases the sense of authenticity. Not for nothing is Brookner's scholarly field the late 18th-century watershed between French classicism and romanticism. Her characters always brush shoulders with romance, but opt instead for the comfort and predictability of classic balance, a quality which is also reflected in the cool elegance of the author's prose. This novel is, in effect, an ANTI-romance, a book in which few things actually happen -- or sometimes happen only to be reversed a few chapters later. There is a situation late in the book in which Emma, who has left her own maternal home, suddenly finds herself in charge of Françoise's home and ailing mother, while the daughter appears to have broken away entirely. But a few pages further, the situation has been stood on its head once more. Such delightful realignments within a basically static universe give me the same fascination as a Calder mobile: a limited range of elements moving in relation to each other, seen now in this configuration, now in that, but always maintaining an essential balance. This applies as much to the delicate rhythm of Brookner's prose as to the subtle push and pull of her emotional plotting. For those who, like me, take pleasure in her quiet aesthetic, her novels create a unique atmosphere: a closed world, perhaps, but one that is totally absorbing and not the least depressing. The title of this book notwithstanding, there is a special satisfaction in completing the emotional circle: coming home again.

Brookner is not for everyone, and while I have read a few of her other novels, this is the first one I have thoroughly enjoyed. Emma Roberts has a deficiency in her makeup such that she cannot form strong emotional relationships. She compensates, as best she can, with her intelligence and capacity for analysis, as expressed in Brookner's brilliant prose. It is a lively intelligence; while Emma is rarely happy, she is resilient, and there is often a lightness of tone, almost a playfulness in her introspection; this, as well as the prose, is what distinguished this novel. I see some analogy between Emma's affliction and autism, and between Emma's use of intelligence to cope and the use of intelligence to cope by Temple Grandin, an autistic animal psychologist. One thing bothered me a bit: there was a rather abrupt transition between the Emma in France doubting her course of study, and the Emma in England devoted to the book/thesis she is writing.

I applaud Brookner for daring to write about the lives of quiet men and women, as they go about making their way in the world as best they can. These are not heroes and heroines whom the world will notice much, if at all. They're not especially good looking, and their clothes are dowdy. They often work in insurance offices, they're struggling grad students, or they're living off of small inheritances. Their sacrifices and small victories, and the lost opportunities that shape their lives are made breathtakingly beautiful by Brookner's spare, elegant style. There is never a superfluous word. And never any sentimentality, thank God. I've analyzed her books thoroughly, and I'm still not sure how she manages to write with such tenderness and such toughness, both at the same time. I don't agree that if you've read one, you've read them all; any more than I would agree with any critic who summed up Ernest Hemingway in that way. But: I won't even pretend to be objective...I've been a fan of this author ever since I read Hotel Du Lac many years ago. Brava, Brookner!