enitharmon | Jan. 4th, 2012

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although it's conspicuously short, this has sat on my shelf for quite a while now. I just didn't feel enticed by it, even as part of my self-imposed quest to read all the Booker winners. Maybe I should have remembered its achievement; after all it took the prize over Empire of the Sun, Flaubert's Parrot and Small World, fine reads all of them.

The problem, I think, is that is impossible to offer a synopsis briefer than 'A romantic novelist in an out-of-season Swiss hotel reflects on life and love' without giving too much away. Hardly the stuff to set the pulse racing is it? And that's exactly where it starts, with Edith who has been banished for some terrible social transgression. And then slowly, very slowly, we get to know the hotel, unknown to travel agents although "[C]ertain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it", and its other guests: the beautiful, rich and self-obsessed Mrs Pusey with her emotionally-retarded daughter Jennifer; the aristocratic Lady X with the incontinent lapdog who escapes to a nearby café to gorge on cake all day; frail Mme Bonneuil, parked there for half of every year by a son who takes her out occasionally; the sinister, amoral Mr Neville. With immaculate pacing, the truth emerges about this bunch of oddballs and the true nature of Edith's dreadful faux pas only becomes apparent towards the end.

Anita Brookner was a well-known art historian in her day job, so it's not surprising that her writing is full of subtle symbolism. No doubt this is a book which will reward repeated re-reading. First time through, although I found it hard at first to get into, it's packed with a very subtle humour. Not laugh-out-loud humour, because that would be out of keeping with its setting, but a discreet, refined and sharply barbed wit which tempers a big dose of pathos.

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