Her heroines were meek, well-educated, cardigan-wearing women, usually the only child of European immigrants, who lived in genteel flats in Kensington, went unwillingly to cocktail parties, had unsatisfactory affairs with unavailable men, and typically locked in private existential struggles between the desire to be happy versus the need to be a good person. Blunt reportedly had Brookner visit a fellow spy in hospital and report his conversations, which she did unthinkingly, not realising she was being used as a go-between until Blunt’s secret life was revealed).īy the time Hotel du Lac came out, Brookner’s style was already well-established. (Random fact: Brookner’s mentor at the Courtauld was Anthony Blunt, who was later revealed to be a spy for the Soviets and the recruiter of “Cambridge Five” spy Guy Burgess, who defected to Russia in the 1960s. Brookner came to writing fiction comparatively late – she was 53 when A Start In Life was published – after a distinguished career as an art historian and academic at the Courtauld Institute. Why it’s a classic: Hotel du Lac was Anita Brookner’s fourth novel, and her fourth book in the space of four years, since her debut A Start In Life in 1981. Edith tears up the letter, books the next flight to London, and sends a telegram to David saying “Returning”. While going to post the letter, she sees Mr Neville leaving Jennifer’s room, presumably after a night-time liaison.

She writes David a letter, explaining that she loves him but will never see him again. Depressed and demoralised, Edith decides to accept his proposal. Edith meets Mr Neville, a hard-headed businessman who offers to marry her, sneering at her romantic notions and persuading her that marriage will improve her social status.

Edith reflects on her relationship with David, whom she loves, and recent, disastrous attempts to marry a dull, well-meaning neighbour. In a series of letters composed to her married lover David, she describes the fellow inhabitants of the hotel: Mrs Pusey, a wealthy, self-satisfied widow and her vacuous daughter Jennifer Madame de Bonneuil, an elderly woman exiled to the hotel by her neglectful son and Monica, an unhappily married society wife with an eating disorder. After jilting her fiancé at the altar, Miss Edith Hope, a middle-aged Englishwoman and writer of romance novels, takes a holiday at a hotel near Lake Geneva. What it’s about: Geneva, Switzerland, the 1980s.

In which I review Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner’s 1984 novel about a romance novelist holidaying at a Swiss hotel, in exile from a failed relationship.

Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner