Leaving home A novel

Anita Brookner

Book - 2007

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Subjects
Genres
Bildungsromans
Published
New York : Vintage Books 2007.
Language
English
Main Author
Anita Brookner (-)
Edition
1st Vintage Contemporaries ed
Physical Description
212 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781400095650
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Fearful of emulating her isolated and timid widowed mother, Emma Roberts, herself circumspect, repressed, and brooding, leaves London for Paris to pursue her study of classical garden design. Emma is trying to live according to the classical ideal, that of order and control and self-mastery, the very life that Brookner has so assiduously examined in each of her subtly powerful psychological novels, which now number 23. Brookner's melancholy but determined narrators approach the business of life like cautious chess players excessively contemplating every move, and Emma is no exception. Almost morbidly attuned to etiquette, she makes her way gingerly across the board, balancing the anguish of loneliness with the pleasures of solitude. Just as nature is seemingly tamed in the gardens Emma studies, she prunes, trellises, and weeds her emotions and desires to create a restrained and decorous life. Adventurous and sexy Francoise is her opposite, and the two forge a tenuous friendship as Francoise and her strong-willed mother battle over the future of their beautiful country home and her mother's scheme to marry Francoise to a wealthy neighbor. As Emma (and yes, the echoes of Austen are appropriate) is reluctantly drawn into their complicated struggle, Brookner infuses every exchange with profound philosophical concerns. It takes a kind of genius to save one's own life, Emma muses, and it takes an astute and rarefied novelist to write large the story of a staid life. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Brookner's narrators often combine a Jamesian inner life with a deceptively blank external one, and Emma Roberts is a paragon of that type. An English doctoral student in the late 1970s whose restraint matches her choice of studies-classical garden design-Emma grew up isolated with a widowed, reclusive mother. "We loved each other greatly," she says, "yet so exclusive was that love that it was experienced more like anguish." Emma is studying in Paris and living as hermetically as her mother; her only acquaintances are a sexually adventurous librarian, Fran?oise, and a reserved young novelist, Michael. When Emma gets word that her mother has died, she rushes home to London and within weeks finds herself in a muted, epistolary power struggle with Fran?oise. Meanwhile, Emma meets Philip Hudson, a surgeon whose taciturn nature rivals her own (and recalls a less exalted Mr. Darcy). But things happen in Emma's life only to be swallowed by the deep, silent river of her shyness and her willingness to go along with what others want. This isn't an Austen novel, and even an instant of unalloyed pleasure would seem glib after several pages of Emma's sere circumspection. That circumspection makes the novel very powerful, even as Emma's passivity is sometimes so extreme it feels concocted only to justify a few more elegant sentences. But Emma is among the most delicately rendered heroines in recent fiction. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Emma Roberts, a subdued, introverted graduate student, leaves the cloistered world she has shared with her reclusive mother in 1970s London to study formal garden design in Paris. Here, despite her loner inclinations, she is befriended by wild-girl librarian Francoise, whose family owns a country mansion but is hampered by financial worries. Booker Prize winner Brookner's (Hotel du Lac) carefully drawn heroine is a study in understatement, with a cautious inner life that may for some readers evoke Jane Austen, minus the humor. After Emma's mother dies suddenly, Emma is forced to analyze her relationship to her childhood, to the men she's met, and to Francoise. Ultimately, the novel traces its heroine's gradual understanding of herself and her place in the world. She's as strictly defined as the gardens she studies and a fascinatingly subtle character. Recommended.-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A lusterless grad student of landscape-gardening trembles on the brink of taking an interest in life. Narrow, reticent, self-contained--these words describe almost any Brookner heroine. They certainly fit Emma Roberts, who sums up her meager origins by saying, "we were a very small, not to say non-existent, family." That family is comprised solely of Emma and her widowed mother. "If I was not extremely vigilant," Emma notes, "I might run the risk of living her life over again." Emma's Uncle Rob is the quintessential Brooknerian Other. Rude and assertive, he detested Emma's long-dead father and openly dislikes her on the basis of her paternity. Before his certitude, Emma and her mother simply ebb away to nothing. When Emma goes to France to research her thesis, she is befriended by a young library assistant named Françoise. Unlike Emma, Françoise is active, aggressive and highly sexed. She invites Emma home to her family's country house and manipulates Emma, to her own advantage. Emma seems to take pleasure in allowing her to do so, in part so the full measure of Françoise's character, or lack of it, will be revealed, but also because even a vicarious life is better than nothing. Emma manifests the same lack of energy in her dealings with men. And because both of the men she knows seem as spiritless as she, these relationships have all the fire of a blaze kindled from a single match and a damp log. Although Emma deplores her purposeless solitude, she works to maintain it and thinks disdainfully that she "prefers her gardens deserted." The beautifully ordered prose of Brookner's 23rd novel (Making Things Better, 2003, etc.) is the verbal equivalent of the empty gardens Emma inhabits. At one point, Emma has a dream in which she knows "simply and conclusively, that I was loved." Nothing in waking life affords her, or us, a comparable satisfaction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 suddenly, from the depths of an otherwise peaceful night, a name erupted from the past: Dolly Edwards, my mother's friend, a smiling woman with very red lips and a fur coat. I remember the coat because it was not removed for the whole of her visit, which she no doubt intended to be fleeting, having, she implied, much to do. There was another friend from my mother's prehistory, before I existed, but this presence was less distinct, perhaps not seen at such close quarters. Betty? Betty Pollock? The Pollock seemed shifting, uncertain, an approximation. Maybe that had been her name before she married, for in my mother's day everyone got married. Women wore their husbands much as they wore their pearl necklaces, or indeed their fur coats. The shame that attached to unmarried women was indelible, and my mother seemed to bear something of that imprint although she was a respectable widow. Dolly Edwards, with her flourishing presence, obviously felt sorry for my mother in her lonely state, with only an eight-year-old child for company. Fortunately my mother did not perceive this, although I did. My mother was impressed by this visit, grateful, even happy. And Dolly Edwards played her part valiantly, reminiscing, producing names unknown to me and rejected by me as having no relevance to my own life. I may even have been jealous of this woman who had known my mother before her anomalous condition was confirmed by the death of my father. Truth to tell she did not much miss him: solitude seemed so much her natural state that Dolly Edwards was not mistaken in making of this a flying visit. My mother marvelled for days over this, with no resentment. It was less a visit than a visitation. It was never repeated. The other friend, the one I thought of as Betty Pollock, though that might not have been her name, was less opulent, but kinder. This friend we actually journeyed to see, an event so rare that I remembered it. This visit occasioned no wistful comments from my mother, probably because Betty Pollock was not someone of whom she had learned to be slightly afraid. She was even rather unattractive, though clearly was not concerned by this, and in any event her large plain features were transformed by her dazzling smile. The other thing I noted about her was that she was happy. This was mysteriously apparent. I experienced it with relief, though I did not understand it. Now of course I can identify it as a state of steady satisfaction combined with an absence of longing. This must have been less the gift of her husband than of Betty Pollock herself, her smile signalling her contentment with her lot to all within her radius. She too had very red lips, though her hair was grey. She too was eager to reminisce, having nothing to hide. Yet my mother seemed inhibited in her presence, perhaps because of the contrast between them. I think that Betty Pollock vanished from the scene shortly after this visit: her husband was anxious to leave London and move back to Swanage, where he had grown up. I think my mother missed her, though not as much as she missed Dolly Edwards, who remained out of touch. They had once been part of the same set, though this was a modest suburban affair, formed largely by parents who knew each other as neighbours or friends, and vigilant elder brothers who did duty as escorts when no other was available. I see Dolly as the bold one, Betty as the poor one, and my mother as the beauty, but whose beauty was undermined by an innocence that never left her. She longed for an ideal life which would not betray her, became married because her own mother wished it, and survived widowhood almost as a return to her natural state. I never knew a woman so inactive, her days reserved for reading and thinking. I soon learned not to disturb either process. Yet I think she was lonely, a perception that filled me with distress. We loved each other greatly, yet so exclusive was that love that it was experienced more like anguish. That feeling has remained with me and will no doubt survive all the rest. It was therefore somehow appropriate that she should die and leave me bereft, and also appropriate, though unforeseen, that I should attach myself to a surrogate--though not a surrogate mother--whom I saw as capable of acting as a mentor. This was not a subject on which I was anxious to dwell, although it had no doubt accounted for my current wakefulness. That this wakefulness had produced only the completely irrele- vant name of Dolly Edwards was one of those connections that the unconscious chose to make ahead of and perhaps more comprehensively than anything achieved by deliberate attention. Dolly Edwards was an associate, however negligent, of my mother. My mother was somehow not viable. It had become necessary for me to look for safety elsewhere, owing to my mother's frailty, her reclusive habits, and her early demise. At all times I had been fearful of leaving home in case something should happen to her. Yet leaving home had become a necessity, although a painful one, if ever I were to find freedom. The unconscious had a complete network installed: I had only to be patient and all would be revealed. I tried to work out the significance of what my abrupt awakening had tried to tell me. When the information came through it was not surprising: I had to undertake a journey. I had to leave home. If I had switched on the light I would have seen my travel bag, half filled, resting against my bedroom chair. What was marvel- lous about this was not the way in which the information had reached me but the fact that the entire process--waking, remembering, and finally coming to full consciousness--had taken no more than a few minutes, or even seconds. My impression of an endless night was erroneous, proof once again of the dark hinterland that produces our more useful understanding. The circuitry was admirable. My eight-year-old self had seen that my mother had somehow been let down by her old friends. In Dolly Edwards's case this was easily explained: she was confident and affluent (the fur coat) and my mother was neither. Betty Pollock was a happy and satisfied woman, as even I had perceived: again, my mother was neither. In the days that succeeded these two encounters, disappointment had turned to sadness at her own inability to advance, and in the shadow of that sadness, only contained, only bearable if left undisturbed, I felt doomed to follow if I were not to make some sort of independent outbreak of my own, and on my own behalf. My best chance would lie in finding another source of authority, another agent of influence. I did not know whether this could be allowed, let alone arranged. It would be a journey away from home, symbolic no doubt but nonetheless real for all that. In any event it would have to be managed, and managed, if possible, without disloyalty, more or less invisibly, above all in good faith. I remain convinced that this is a critical task but not one which brings with it a resounding sense of victory. In my own life very little has changed. I am older now, of course. I live alone, in a small flat, with the instinctive frugality of those who live alone, financially secure though never extravagant. I sit and write the book on which I have been working for some years now and which is almost finished, much to my publisher's surprise. In fact, despite the many delays, this tactic has served me rather well. The book is always immanent, but not in a position to be judged. The larval nature of the book pleases both one's friends and one's rivals. When questioned about its progress one responds with a certain smile, a smile that implies secret activity, and replies, quite truthfully, that one seems to have collected a great deal of material, so much so that the book may turn out to be more substantial than anticipated. I have seen this technique used to great effect by the worldly, so that the very absence of the book is more potent than its presence could ever be. In my case I can only plead an anxious sincerity: there is a great deal of material, and sometimes it seems that there will always be a reason for me to undertake one more journey, to revisit familiar sites and walk once again in deserted gardens, the only visitor on grey autumn mornings, until I realize that my work is truly finished. And that may be a very sad day. My departures are all the same now, accomplished without difficulty but with a certain philosophical fatigue. Once I would have gone anywhere, strenuously; now I tend to go to the same places, which I know well, too well perhaps. I also see a few friends who have survived our now separate lives. Once we were familiars; now we are merely figures in the same landscape, and what had once been eagerness has become obligation. There is no blame attaching to this; the trajectory had been designed by the unconscious, a long time ago. But the unconscious does not rule the world, does not even illuminate it, apart from these brief fragments of understanding. It is, after all, only part of the self. The other part, the most important, is subject to the will. But it is also subject to the will of others. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from Leaving Home by Anita Brookner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.