Anita Brookner
BORN HERNE HILL, SOUTH LONDON JULY 16, 1928. DIED MARCH 10, 2016 AGED 87
THE BOOKER prize-winning novelist and art historian Anita Brookner was celebrated for both her incisive style and her empathy with the lonely and loveless. She was also a keen exponent of the Jewish angst that often typified her era, but she preferred to be taken seriously as an English writer.
Although she did not start writing fiction until she was in her 50s, Brookner was praised by Ron Charles, editor of Book World at the Washington Post, who considered that no one “captured the rhythms of loneliness as brilliantly as she did.”
A prime example of this was her fourth novel, Hotel du Lac, which won her the Booker Prize in 1984. That work, which beat the runaway favourite JG Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, was described by the judges as “a work of pure artifice” — an unusual assessment since its protagonist, Edith Hope, is forced to come to terms with the painful loneliness experienced on holiday in a Swiss hotel where she is banished by friends after breaking her engagement.
Although some, like Jonathan Coe, praised her as “magnificent” and a “great writer”, winning the Booker surprised some literary critics. But Coe assessed it as “one of the best Booker winners ever.” In fact, it went on to become one of the top ten bestsellers of the decade and was adapted
Anita Brookner: she brilliantly captured the rhythms of loneliness