A Family Romance by Anita Brookner
'Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared.'
Paul and Henrietta Manning and their solitary, academic daughter Jane have nothing in common with Dolly, widow of Henrietta's brother. Corseted and painted, Dolly is a frivolous, superficial woman, who has little time for those without that inestimable quality - charm.
Jane, in particular, falls into this category, especially after the death of her parents. But Jane has money - and a conscience - and these bind her to Dolly. Through disagreements, disappointments and disapprovals, Jane and Dolly are enmeshed in an uneasy alliance in which history and family create closer ties than friendship ever could.
The novel is nearly as perfect an instance of its genre as it is reasonable to ask* Frank Kermode, Spectator *
This is vintage Brookner: all exquisite understatement, acute observation and razor-sharp dissection of motive. * Time Out *
This small history unfolds slowly, with delicious wit or bitter pathos, and finally with a marvellous, lingering human resonance. * Sunday Express *
Compelling . . . some classic Brookner quality stays in the mind; questions hover, polite but uncomfortable, long after the final page. * Times Literary Supplement *
This is vintage Brookner: all exquisite understatement, acute observation and razor-sharp dissection of motive. * Time Out *
This small history unfolds slowly, with delicious wit or bitter pathos, and finally with a marvellous, lingering human resonance. * Sunday Express *
Compelling . . . some classic Brookner quality stays in the mind; questions hover, polite but uncomfortable, long after the final page. * Times Literary Supplement *
Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and after holding a post as a professor at Cambridge University and spending several years in Paris, she worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her twenty-fourth, Strangers, in 2009. In 1984, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner published a number of volumes of art criticism. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990. She died in 2016 at the age of 87.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780241979426 |
| ISBN 10 | 0241979420 |
| Title | A Family Romance |
| Author | Anita Brookner |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2016-11-03 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |