Anita Brookner

«A sus cuarenta años, la doctora Weiss comprendió que la literatura le había destrozado la vida.» Ruth Weiss es una profesora universitaria inteligente y solitaria que se ha especializado en los pers

Cuando Edith Hope, escritora de novelas románticas, tiene que abandonar Gran Bretaña por motivos sentimentales, se dirige a Suiza, a un hotel a la orilla del Lago Leman, cerca de Ginebra. Edith va a permanecer en el Hotel du Lac el tiempo suficiente para que sus amigos de Inglaterra olviden el episodio amoroso del que fue protagonista, episodio que causo su declive social y que ella ira reviviendo y desvelando al lector, a pesar de la trampas y los obstaculos que una memoria reacia al recuerdo acostumbra a interponer. Hotel du Lac es una novela en la que se traza, a traves de las actitudes y comportamientos de los personajes, un fresco del amor romantico y la condicion femenina.

Julius Herz is 73, friendless, and lonely, and still in love with his cousin Fanny, who rejected him years before. Unexpectedly, she enters his life, widowed and poor, and expects Julius to care for her. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

'I have come to believe that there can be no adequate preparation for the sadness that comes at the end, the sheer regret that one's life is finished, that one's failures remain indelible and one's successes illusory.' Elizabeth and Betsy are old school friends. Born in 1948 and unready for the sixties, they had high hopes of the lives they would lead, even though their circumstances were so different. When they meet again in their thirties, Elizabeth, married to the safe, older Digby is relieving the boredom of a cosy but childless marriage with an affair. Betsy seems to have found real romance in Paris. Are their lives taking off, or are they just making more of the wrong choices without even realising it?

As Hertz struggles with his self-induced dilemma, he looks back over his life, searching for an answer. If he can only think things through rationally, perhaps the way forward was always there, hidden somewhere in the past, waiting for him to finally realise its significance? With a mixture of pathos and mild distaste, he reflects on his distant, ordered childhood in pre-war Germany, his unrequited love for his beautiful, haughty cousin Fanny, to whom, in desperate middle age, he would rashly propose. He remembers the family's enforced exile to London, their role as polite refugees, obligated to kindly compatriots. And then the onset of his brother's "illness", precipitating the end of his career as a concert pianist, the crumbling of his mother's dreams and his own rise as family carer. And his brief respite marriage to Josie whose pragmatism could never dovetail with his own servility.

Elizabeth and Betsy, old school friends meet again in their thirties. Elizabeth is relieving the boredom of a cosy but childless marriage with an affair. Betsy seems to have found real romance in Paris. Are their lives taking off, or are they just making more wrong choices?

When Emma Roberts goes to France, she finds a diversion from her studies in her unlikely new friend Francoise Desnoyers. London recedes into the background as life in France becomes more significant in every respect. It is not until the horrifying episode that puts an end to this fascination, that Emma is reconciled to her duller but safer life.