Hotel Du Lac
A Novel (Man Booker Prize Winner)
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3.6 • 73 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • In the novel that established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new way to frame the eternal question, "Why love?"
"Brookner's most absorbing novel ... wryly realistic ... graceful and attractive." —Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review
When middle-aged romance writer Edith Hope’s life begins to resemble the melodramatic plots of her own novels, her friends banish her to Switzerland, where they hope the luxurious calm of the Hotel du Lac will restore her to her senses. But instead of contritely contemplating her mistakes, Edith spends her time keenly observing her eccentric fellow guests and writing unsent letters to the married lover she is supposed to be trying to forget. Before long, despite her determination to stay quietly on the sidelines, Edith attracts the attention of a worldly man who believes that they are uniquely situated to solve each other's problems. Beautifully observed and witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The winner of the 1984 Booker Prize, this novel tells the story of Edith Hope, 40, unmarried and distraught over a failed love, who is persuaded by friends to go to the quiet, respectable Hotel du Lac in Switzerland. A writer of romantic fiction, Hope becomes enmeshed in the lives of the other guests. Noting that the delivery was perhaps more important than specific events, PW called Brookner "insidiously observant, so soft of voice the reader must listen closely for the wry wit and sly humor. She is poignantly moving.''
Customer Reviews
Setting as metaphor
Writer Edith Hope escapes her life in the UK and travels to the Hotel du Lac on the shores of Lake Geneva. She arrives as the aging hotel is entering it’s off season, just after the tourists of summer have left but before it shuts down for a long winter. At the hotel, Edith meets eccentric guests: a mother and daughter who spend all day shopping, a woman with an eating disorder and a dog, and the lone man, Mr. Neville. As the novel progressed the reader learns what brought Edith to the hotel.
When analyzing a book, I think the title is the first clue to the author’s intention. This book is named after the setting of the book, not a character, situation, or theme. The setting is the book in many ways, doing so much work to establish mood, theme, metaphor. Consequently, the novel isn’t plot driven as much as a character study. Still, I was enraptured by the novel from page one.
Edith is a sympathetic, but off-putting heroine of this story. As we learn more of her background, I really felt for her in many ways, but at the same time I questioned her choices. The other characters in the novel are in similar situations. This book explores marriage from several angles: wife, widow, mother, mistress. The hotel is a metaphor for the aging women who are on the cusp of their own winter.
Brookner’s prose is not inviting. She uses advanced vocabulary (I had to look up over ten words!) and acrobatic sentences. Her diction can slow entry into the novel, but once I adjusted to the writing, I was invested. I haven’t read a book with such style in a long time.
I loved the ending of this novel. It was surprising, frustrating, yet true to the character. Overall, I really loved this short novel, more and more as I think about it. Brookner is a brilliant writer and I can’t wait to read more by her.
Hotel du Lac
Anita Brookner in best form.