Hotel Du Lac
by Anita Brookner
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anita BrooknerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-10-03
ISBN: 0679759328
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Hotel Du Lac
Book Review: A cautionary tale for life's tortoises...
Summary: 5 Stars
The perfect cover for an excellent, insightful novel. The dabbled light on the walk, the chair that says "Europe"; a lone woman, hands in her coat, head down, obviously deeply absorbed in considering a cusp of her life, trailed by her one true friend, her dog... or is it a cat? And the "lac" of the title is Lake Geneva; the story unfolds on the Swiss side. What sort of hotel is it? "Travel agents did not know it, or had forgotten it." It has a special function, for a special cliental: "Certain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it." And in particular: "Those families who benefit from the periodic absence of one of their more troublesome members treasured it."
Edith Hope arrives at the Hotel du Lac not because it is a sought destination, but rather her absence from another setting is desired. She has committed a grievous faux pas, but we don't learn what she has done until a brilliantly written flashback, three-fourths of the way through the novel, reveals her decision that "The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner" would have understood so well. Hope is a middling sort of novelist, who writes "fantasy and obfuscation" for the (female) tortoise market. The "hares" didn't have time to read, so she spins her tales for the "tortoises" who win every time, because "they prefer the old myths...they want to believe that they are going to be discovered, looking their best, behind closed doors, just when they thought that all was lost, by a man who has battled across continents, abandoning whatever he may have had in his in-tray, to reclaim them." Wow! Such is the power of Brookner's prose. As she explains, Hope could write these tales because she was a tortoise herself.
And the "hares"? "To Penelope, men were conquests, attributes, but they were also enemies; ... Her tone with such men was flirtatious, mocking, never serious; she spread about her a propaganda of rapid affairs, rapidly consummated, with a laughing lack of commitment on both sides." "I'm talking about the complacent consumers of men with their complicated but unwritten rules of what is due to them. Treats. Indulgences. Privileges. The right to make illogical fusses. The cult of themselves." "The whole sorry business of baiting the sexual trap was uncovered by Monica's refusal to behave herself in a way becoming to a wife: by sheer effrontery she would damage her husband's pride, humble him into keeping her, or, if not, ruin his reputation."
Yes, the tortoises and hares of life. Another Brookner theme, one of the critical ones, particularly for women, and their haunting bio clock, is age. The author plays it so well, keeping the reader guessing how old the characters are at the Hotel. Be prepared for a surprise or two. And those other characters, they are so authentically drawn, with a balance of empathy and criticism. And if you have a few miles on your odometer, you might say, yes, that is just like... so-and-so. Why could I never articulate the self-absorption of the shallowest of lives as Brookner has done?
Brookner certainly deserved the not quite eponymous Booker Prize for this novel, written over a quarter century ago. Even at the time, the author was describing a social anachronism of a place, as well as the misfits who did not particularly seek refuge there as so much as they were sent, as though it were an asylum. But her insights into the human condition remain "cutting age"; a pleasure and a pain to contemplate. So, I'll close with two: "The company of their own sex, Edith reflected, was what drove many women into marriage." And: "And once you are married, you can behave as badly as everybody else."
Finally, Brookner teases you with the ending, as you wonder: Will she pull an "Edith Hope" herself?
Positively 5-stars, particularly on the re-read.
Summary of Hotel Du Lac
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.
Edith Hope (a.k.a. romance author Veronica Wilde) has been banished by her friends to a stately hotel in Switzerland. During her stay she befriends some of the other guests, each of whom has his or her own tale. Edith struggles to come to terms with her career and love--the lack, the benefits, and the meaning thereof.
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