Hot stuff, hot stuff
Can't get enough
Hot stuff, hot stuff, can't get enough ( )

This got off to a really slow start. First there is an unnecessary introductory chapter and then there is a long bit about the family history before the main character is born. When the book finally gets going about a quarter of the way in it quickly turns into a marvellous life story. Mostly it's a story about Maud from Dijon who doesn't quite fit into the social world that her mother, who is something like a poor relation out of an historical novel, wants her to be part of. The thing that seemed oddest though was that several mentions were made of it being 1971 when the core of the story takes place. The characters act like they come from an earlier time, and the timeline of the end of the story goes well past 1995 when it was written. Neither of which are that odd really now I come to write them down! I like Brookner's writing but find it hard to get going with sometimes.

The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – creates a story to explain the sighs, attitudes, and distance she perceived between her parents.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources. As Maud described her marriage:

There was a slight additional loneliness in her increasing isolation from everyone but her husband, but her own calm good sense was there to remind her that she was not at home, that she had never expected to be at home, and that those who did not rely on their inner resources, as she had been obliged to do, were forever condemned to weep in other women’s drawing rooms . . . .

Like Maud’s life, this is a quiet book worthy of reflection.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. ( )

Another wonderful novel by Anita Brookner. If you like Eugene Onegin, either the Pushkin poem or the Tchaikovsky opera adaptation, this is the book for you. ( )

My other favorite book by her. The other is Hotel du Lac. ( )