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Understanding Anita Brookner (Understanding Contemporary British Literature)
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Understanding Anita Brookner examines the undeniably bleak view of the world in Brookners fiction and the solitary protagonists whose faith in a better world is both their tragedy and their beauty. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm acquaints the reader with Brookners distinguished career (first as an eminent art critic and historian, then as a writer), critical acclaim and awards, London birth and lifelong residence, and Polish Jewish family background. She examines the limited range of literary forms with which Brookner, abjuring the postmodern devices of jumbled chronologies and multiple narrators, contents herself. She illustrates Brookners recurrent point of view, characterized by traditional British cultural valuesunderstatement, deference to authority, and acceptance of a class system.Malcolm also points out the significance of the names, physical appearance, clothing, eating, and other habits of Brookners characters, demonstrating how the novelist uses a closeup rather than a wideangle lens . . . to focus on a single protagonist or relationship, often within a brief time span. In crafting these characters Brookner relies more heavily on the use of reflection than action, with minimal dialogue and muted tone. In interviews she describes her characters as if they were independent of her pen, as if their fates were their own, not her, doing.Despite her aloofness from literary fashion, Brookner has from the first commanded critical respect. In her nineteen short novels to date, she develops themes that recall Henry James and an earlier timethe elusiveness of human contentment, the natural disposition of some to renunciation, the inescapability of feelings of loneliness and displacement. Analyzing these themes, Malcolm shows that the beauty of Brookners novels is not in the message of isolation but in the telling of the story.
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