Altered States.Standing on a railway platform in a Swiss resort town, sensibly clad in his Burberry raincoat and walking shoes, a man thinks he may be looking at the woman for whom he ruined his life many years earlier. Alan Sherwood, a quiet English solicitor, remembers back to a time when he stepped briefly out of character to indulge in a liaison with Sarah Miller, an intriguing but heartless distant relative—only to find himself in a series of absurd situations that culminated in his marriage to Sarah's clinging, childlike friend Angela. With her compassionate portrait of a man who has paid a terrible price for his folly, Anita Brookner gives us a novel that it at once harrowing and humane. In the traditions of Henry James and Thomas Mann, Altered States is a beautifully rendered tale of loneliness, guilt, and erotic obsession...
In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a psudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to resore her to her senses. But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.
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.
Una historia de familia ( A family romance, 1993) se centra en el contraste entre la vida de la narradora y protagonista, Jane, nacida en los años sesenta, que aspira ante todo a realizarse como ser humano, y su tía Dolly, nacida en 1922, y educada para la vida social y para agradar a los hombres en pos del matrimonio. Pese a tal disparidad generacional de educación, un reconocimiento y una comprensión mutua terminan por unir a estas dos mujeres, cuyo relato se sitúa principalmente en Londres, pero también en París y Bruselas.
