Providence

Kitty Maule, a professor of literature, falls in love with Maurice Bishop, professor of medieval history. Kitty loved him for two years and entertained high hopes but their brief affair settles down into a sort of comradely routine which puzzles her but which she accepts. She soon realises that she is not indispensable for him. Like the main character in Benjamin Constant's novel "Adolphe" which she teaches in one of her classes, Kitty becomes aware of the fact that a man gets tired of a woman if she sacrifices everything for him. Anita Brookner uses Benjamin Constant's "Adolphe" as a counterpoint to Kitty's restrained but passionate affair with Maurice, who does not return her love. Kitty eventually loses Maurice to one of her students, a pretty and vapid young woman, and resigns herself to disappointment in life and love. And this is typical Anita Brookner: a woman's placid existence is interrupted by people and events outside her control, pushed to a certain point of emotional crisis, before resuming its progress towards isolation, or perhaps greater realism.

Drat, Anita Brookner is GOOOD! It is true there are qualities of sameness to so many of her books, but frankly that's a good quality when the sameness is something that interests the reader. She's a lot like Iris Murdoch in that way. Ms. Murdoch also re-wrote the same book over and over a few times, but either I have creeping senility and don't mind, or the caliber of the writing is so high I don't even care. I just think Anita Brookner is incredibly impressive, and that's that. _Providence_ has so much to say about women "of a certain age" who start questioning the choices they've made and whether they maybe should pick out a china pattern and settle down after all. It may give feminists the jitters seeing these strong female characters contemplating whether or not they do actually "need" a male in their lives, as it does somewhat beg the question as to whether a strong woman on her own should even be thinking about His 'n Hers towels, but I just adore the female characters in Brookner's books. They're a bit fusty, in some ways, and never the beauties, but they all have wonderfully developed inner lives and are generally quite secure in all ways but romantically. If you enjoy Brooker, try Barbara Pym and Jane Gardner, as well as the above-mentioned Iris Murdoch. Just trust me!

Half-French, London-bred Kitty Maule is clever, well-bred and pretty. She is also excepionally lonely. Other than lounging occasionally with her aging maternal grandparents, her colleague and her neigbor, her one comfort is in work itself, as she gives tutorials and prepares for her inaugural lecture in the Romantic Tradition -- secretly pining meanwhile for love in the form of academic colleague Maurice Bishop. Brookner's sharp and laconic second novel is quite enjoyable. Again we see flashes of Jane Austen and Henry James here, the two writers whom Brookner is most indebted to, although Brookner couldn't quite match either in depths of her characterizations. The clarity of her style, though, is clearly inherited from the two above. While Kitty Maule may fit into the gloom and pall of Brookner heroines -- she is inwardly yearning for another life and escape from mundaneness -- here the tone is lighter than usual, working towards an unexpected conclusion. I had been veering between 3 1/2 and 4 stars for this book, but at any rate this short novel is far, far better than the overrated, anaemic Hotel du Lac.

Never before have I read a book that has spoken so deeply to my heart. It is a book about a lonely academic woman who longs for love. She is extremely successful in the world of academia, but cannot reconcile her intellectual life with her love life. She doesn't believe she can start her life until she has found a man to live with and she gets all self-worth from the affirmation of Maurice, the man she pines away for. She hates leaving work for an empty home everyday and all she wants is to be loved in such a way that even when parted from the other she would never be alone. After reading this book, a person is left to wonder about the plight of the single life. Many questions arise such as: Can a single person be happy, fulfilled? Can academia fill emotional voids? Where does a person get self-worth? "Providence" is a love story. It's about a love freely given, but clearly denied. What makes "Providence such a profound and intriguing book is that it mirrors the author's life. Anita Brookner sees her life as a disappointment, noting that she never had a family because she never left school. She was an only child with a Polish-Jewish background who grew up in London. This left her feeling alienated and alone. She noted herself as being one of the lonliest women in London. All of her life experiences carry over to "Providence," and because they do, the novel is frighteningly real. If you're looking for a good read, "Providence's" theme deals with what the whole human race longs for...love.