Strangers By Anita Brookner

Strangers

Brookner's remarkable insights into the human heart and the tyranny of habits and routine always speak to me. I first gave it three stars but on re-reading it some years later, I regard it more highly than before. 9781905490424 First of all, huge thanks to Mary for reminding me how wonderful Anita Brookner’s books are and sharing a beautiful story related to one of them. ‘Strangers’ is the fourth novel by this author I’ve read so far. Definitely not the last.

The way Anita Brookner’s books are written makes me think of a tea cozy: pastel and soft outside, dense with boiling emotions inside. Her novels are quiet but you can sense it’s the calm before the storm.

If I had to choose one word that describes best this nostalgic novel and its wistful atmosphere, it would be nebulous. I absorbed fleeting melancholy which surrounded me like fog, and lingered afterwards like a smell of autumn bonfire. ‘Strangers’ is a sad book with conclusions like ‘Life gets lonelier; that’s the truth of the matter’ but Brookner seasoned it with a pinch of ironical humour and a handful of warmth and understanding. She respects her characters even when they behave a bit ridiculously.

As usual, Brookner turns out to be brilliant at creating psychological portraits. Paul Surgis, aged 74, blamed for being too nice, calls himself dull and boring but don’t let him deceive you. He is a typical flâneur, fond of walking, travelling and watching people and the world go by. ‘He made strenuous efforts to live in the present, and sometimes almost succeeded.’ We meet also three women who played a significant role in his life: Helena with her ‘adamantine self-regard’, grumpy Sarah and unpredictable, mysterious Vicky.

Brookner’s style is so fine that the language of the book by a different author I’m currently reading seems rough hewn compared to ‘Strangers’. I should have had some quarantine before I began reading something else. :)

‘Strangers’ is a moving novel about solitude, aging, love, death, our frustrating desire to go back to the past, to name just a few problems. It’s also a book about the role of literature in our lives. Paul Sturgis loves books, he finds consolation and joy in them.

Anita Brookner is not a perfect choice for readers who enjoy only action-packed, fast-paced books with straightforward protagonists and ready answers to all questions you could possibly ask. They might feel exasperated or even furious because of the sluggish plot, droopy characters, constant self-analysis and a repetitive pattern: action moves a millimeter and a few pages of comments follow. Yes, I know, it doesn’t sound very inviting but please, give Anita Brookner a chance anyway and feel how the subtle magic of her prose works. 9781905490424 This is the last of the three Brookner novels I found in the local library, and in some ways may be the best of the three. Her subject Paul Sturgis is not a natural choice for a novel's protagonist - he is a retired former bank employee in his 70s who lives alone in a London flat, and has very few friends. At the start of the book his only regular social contact is with his cousin's widow, but two chance encounters create the story.

The first is with Vicky Gardner, who he meets on a trip to Venice he has made to avoid Christmas. Mrs Gardner is a divorcee whose lifestyle is rootless and itinerant, and Paul is alternately drawn by his interest in her lifestyle and his distaste for the way she exploits him, using his flat as a storage space for her belongings. The second is with Sarah, an old girlfriend of his youth who left him to marry a husband who is now dead. Sarah's acceptance of the limitations imposed on her lifestyle by age also upsets Paul, whose chivalry towards her is only grudgingly accepted.

As always with Brookner, what makes the book enjoyable is the language and the dry humour, and she even manages a surprisingly happy ending that spurns any obvious romantic cliche. 9781905490424 ”But life, as he had discovered, was not like a novel. Or perhaps he had mistaken fiction for truth, or, more likely, mistaken truth for a more thrilling, more authentic form of fiction.”

I’ve often thought how easier life would be if I could write the dialogue for the people in my life. They get it wrong so much of the time that I often wonder why I bother with them at all. I can’t fire them, though even if I could, I’d only replace them with other people equally inept at saying the right thing that will keep the plot moving at the proper pace. Life is not a play, a novel, or a movie. It is actually rather messy.

With lots of uhhhhs and ahhhhs and ohhhhs.

Paul Sturgis has managed, not by design, to arrive at retirement without snagging a wife. He has a failing that, though properly identified, mystifies him as to why it is a disqualifying attribute for being one half of a blissful marriage.

”He had acquired girlfriends, for his hawkish looks promised a favourable outcome to each entanglement, and fell in love regularly, though never entirely wholeheartedly, longing for something more extreme, more transforming, than evenings at the theatre, dinners in restaurants, and visits to his flat, which temporary company did little to enhance, until the day, or rather the night when he was told of his failing, a character assassination that seemed to promise a lifetime of loneliness.”

You see Paul’s problem is a dastardly one. It is one that all men, by the time they reach a certain age, realize that, once you have been categorized as such by a woman, it is the kiss of death to a relationship. Yes, when she mutters those terrible words:

You are simply too nice.

In Paul’s case, they usually get hurled at him with a baffling level of anger, as if the woman knows that she is kicking a dog for laying his head on her knee. It is frustrating to women, as well as to “nice” men, reaching this perplexing impasse. Needless say, there are many women, as well, who marry perfectly nice men and are content with their relationship. I’ve never personally met these women, but I’m told they exist. The problem is that nice is perceived as boring, so if nice=boring and this is the dating stage, what would a lifetime of marriage look like? Boring, more boring, head banging against a door boring.

Thank goodness Paul has his books.

”At the sight of a bookshop he felt a desire to be in a closed space and went in, though he had little need for more books. The books he remembered had nothing to do with the life he now led, yet they promised so much in the way of revelation. This too was misleading: revelation only benefited the teller, rarely his audience. Yet such revelations that stayed with him remained his only touchstone of authenticity.”

Novels, and I hate to say this, might be part of Paul’s problem. In the controlled environment of a writer guided plot where all is revealed, the dialogue sparkles, misunderstandings are only plot devices that lead the protagonist to an emotional, music soaring, pulse pounding, sunset setting, lip locking, tongue tangling, boy gets girl (or any of the other numerous variations of hook ups) moment of pure ecstacy. Every loose string of the plot is gathered up in a nice bow. The reader does not have to wonder if Jack rides off into the sunset with Jane or if they will live happily ever after because the writer tells them they do.

Well, not the novels I read, not that I don’t mind some escapism, but I also enjoy novels that reflect real life. Things don’t always work out, and life is full of loose strings. Anita Brookner knows about the foibles of life.

Though I will say, Paul does read Henry James, and James took almost as much malicious joy as George R. R. Martin in torturing his reading public. Maybe if Paul had read Henry James as more of an instruction manual he might have been more prepared for the disappointments of life.

Paul has another problem, besides being too nice. He is in remarkably good health and is staring down the barrel of several more decades of a perfectly safe, boring, lonely existence. To stave off pondering the inevitability of his life Paul decides to shake things up and departs on a vacation to Venice to at least temporarily escape that appalling flat he bought for its trendy location. He has loathed it since the minute he first opened the door to look at it. What a ridiculous thing to find himself stuck in an ugly flat for the remaining days of his life. It is actually oddly humorous.

In Venice, he meets this vivacious divorcee who has spurned her husband because she caught him frolicking with a young woman. It seems like a small basis to throw a marriage away in Paul’s mind, but then he understands the difficulty of obtaining and keeping a relationship. As Paul gets to know Vicky better, he starts to realize how rootless her life is without a proper place to live. She relies on the kindness of strangers (Paul is saddled with bags of her luggage). To set Paul’s teeth even more on edge, she is always scheming about grand plans to go hither or yon without even a proper plan as to how to make it so.

She is a horrid, completely self-centered creature, completely unsuitable for Paul, and yet he can’t spurn her. She may prove to have a rare value indeed. To further complicate Paul’s suddenly topsy turvy existence, an old flame, one of the women who hurled his nice attributes back in his face at the vitriolic level of Taming of the Shrew, falls back into his life, much more subdued and even remembering their time together with some fondness.

So will Paul end up with Vicky or back with Sarah? Or will he catch a midnight train to some remote destination to regain some control back in his life? Loneliness can start to seem like a virtuous, wonderous existence.

Anita Brookner is known for her exploration of characters who feel isolated and abandoned by society. I’ve seen some reviewers who say nothing happens in her novels. I understand that not all great books are for all readers, but who has not experienced loneliness? I’ve always been surrounded by friends and family and well wishers, but regardless of whether I’m sitting in a room full of people or knocking around in the hallways of my own mind in an empty room, I know what loneliness is. A Brookner novel can sometimes be the perfect antidote for my own feelings of seclusion. There are times when I can walk a mile in the shoes of one of the well conceived Brookner characters with ease and too much comfort.

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I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten 9781905490424 This book made me so sad... It's about loneliness. The main figure is probably the most lonely figure in literature. He's conscious about being lonely but in the main time dreads interference of other people. The two women who cross his path are nearly also as lonely as he is... so not a happy novel to read. Not that they all must be happy. But it has some fatalistic mood hanging over it... But that doesn't mean it wasn't a good book, certainly very good written. 9781905490424

With the telling of this story, Anita Brookner has provided the student of psychology with an in-depth character study. I have frequently compared her observations of the human spirit with those of Ruth Rendell. The latter utilizes these devices in mystery novels, but Brookner features her characteristics mainly as a means to portray how her characters conduct their everyday life. She has deftly plumbed the depths of unhappiness and loneliness.

Paul Sturgis, the main character is an elderly, solitary man. His isolation is of his own choosing. Wary of strangers and cautious about social intercourse, he maintains a sense of aloofness, lest his interactions are misinterpreted. He is stodgy, set in his ways and prefers propriety in his life. Because of this, he asks little of people, thus receiving minimal exchange with others. Bereft of friends and family, he begins to analyze his actions and his life and yearns for alterations in his existence.

“Even the prospect of returning to his old habits was hedged with uncertainty. He could no longer tolerate his own company. Even the prospect of boring, and being bored by, somebody else seemed preferable to the habitual sameness of his own thoughts.” (p. 126)

“In the absence of comfort he was forced to contemplate his own failure, failure not in wordly terms, but in the reality of his circumscribed life.” (p. 175)

“He was thus a failure by his own standards and only by dint of extreme privacy had he kept this hidden from others”. (p. 187)

At times I felt that descriptions of this characters’s attributes were redundant, but they served to reinforce impressions for the reader. This is not an uplifting tale, but Brookner’s probing expertise and elegant prose has brought depth to the narrative. I was eager to discover the outcome for this troubled soul.

Brookner’s talented efforts in precision and insights are certainly worthy of a four star rating, but the tale itself seems to warrant three stars. 9781905490424 My first Brookner. Loved it and devoured it in one day. I'm a sucker for these depressing, meandering nostalgia novels. Are all her books like this? 9781905490424 I raced to the library just minutes before it closed. I had to get a book, any book and I didn't have time to be choosy. I grabbed five from the first shelf I came to (fiction A-B) and when I went to the check out narrowed my selections to two. Brookner's Strangers was one of those. And look how I rated it. I guess you can't pick a good book in haste.

Though, I hate giving someone who is quite a good writer only one star, but if the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, someone has to say it.

I was highly dissatisfied.

Dreary, dull, no dialogue. Plotless. Repetitious.

This man is old and lonely. Retired. Bored. FOR 235 PAGES. Two women come into his life, one a kind of wandering fly-by-night type (he meets her on a plane) and the other, an old flame (she left him because he was too nice). Yet he can't connect with either of them properly, he wants to, but then again, they irritate him, and then he wants to, but no, it's just too daunting. Back and forth, back and forth. It drove me batty.

Maybe I'm just too American but I couldn't stand the way the characters in this novel were so. . .British. Usually, I'd categorize myself as an anglophile, but not this time around. This man was reserved, reticent, uptight to the point where I was ready to break his neck, or maybe stab the book. Something violent. All the characters pretended they were busy and engaged just because they were too proud to admit that they were lonely. You know the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby? Just listen to that song and spare yourself the reading of this book. It's no coincidence the Beatles are British. You don't have to be that lonely, unless you're a Brit. I mean, look, if you're well off and bored and need something to do, go work in a soup kitchen or something, make yourself useful. Stop wandering the streets of London pining and feeling sorry for yourself. Or do it, but don't write a book about it. And make us think it's going to be worth reading because you're a former Booker prize winner.

It galls me that this guy pines for connection but then when someone asks him for help (Wander Woman asks him to store a piece of her luggage in his flat, while she jets around elsewhere) this is a MAJOR inconvenience for him. This is unacceptable that she should require so much of him. What? It's asking too much, to store somebody's bag in your house--of course your life is an utter failure if even that much of a commitment does you in.

And then, Sarah, the ex girlfriend has the nerve to ask him to go and make sure a door is locked in her house in the south of France. And he goes over there and checks it and yes, it was locked. But he is disappointed that this adventure didn't fulfill him. Why does he let himself be taken advantage of in these ways? Poor him.

And now I have just described to you the two major things that happen in this book.

The rest are ruminations:
1. he thinks about the house he grew up in
2. he doesn't like his current flat
3. he likes to look at strangers, but he doesn't want to get too cozy with anyone
4. he feels bad he never got married or had children
5. he figures he was just too nice
5. repeat thoughts 1-5 ad nauseam and you have the book

Pointless.



9781905490424 The work of most great novelists runs hot and cold. Anita Brookner is no exception to that rule. Strangers is a bit of a slog. There is an acuity to Brookner's best work--including Latecomers, Hotel du Lac, Brief Lives, and Incidents in the Rue L'Augier--a charged mastery of subject matter in which nothing escapes her narrator. That mastery is lacking in Strangers. Never does the novel seem to gather itself and sing. There are a few moments where brevity and acuity come together to achieve something we might call the signature Brookner moment. Thematically Strangers is in keeping with Brookner's past work. Though here she deals with an elderly man instead of a woman, Paul Sturgis, who, anticipating death, understands that because he is utterly alone he will soon have to give himself up to those courteous persons he runs into in daily life (waiters, bakers, optometrists, and so on). It is these strangers who he is counting on to put him in the ground. For that reason he pays special attention to weather forecasts, since the weather often constitutes a central topic in chat with such persons. Yes, very sad, but real, and typically Brooknerian. It is this mindset that preoccupies Paul when he bumps into Sarah again, a lover who had long ago discarded him. She has since gone on to marry, become widowed, and to meet up with Paul again decades later. Formerly fiercely independent and critical, Sarah is now a hypochondriac and a whiner, fearing death. Her separation from Paul came when she accused him of being too nice and fled, not to be seen again until all those years later. She is still critical, and Paul is still nice. And the basic conflict is still there between them. Yet now there is somewhat more solidarity on her side because of the infirmities of age. Sarah in her frailty needs Paul somewhat more than she did in her free and independent days, but he still drives her up the wall with his kindness. Late in the novel, Paul lets fly a criticism of her house in France, an Art Deco monstrosity which he loathes, and in that moment the reader immediately sees what Sarah finds missing in Paul. Someone who could be far more entertaining, if more caustic. Someone we might feel more on guard around, but someone perhaps worth taking the risk to be around. The other person in Paul's life we might call his opposite. This is Mrs. Gardner. Though not very smart or--better word--very informed, she has an absolutely enviable ability to embrace impermanence. She is essentially homeless, but it doesn't bother her. She simply finds some other friend to impose upon. And yet--somehow--this doesn't seem to immobilize her on the lower level of Maslow's hierarchy. In fact, she may actually achieve self-actualization, though we never see this happen and can only suspect it occurs offstage. Paul finds her annoying and fascinating. He has spent his life making all the safe choices. He worked in a bank for thirty years, advising investors, and is now retired. During his career he made choice investments for himself so that today he has no money worries. Mrs. Gardner fascinates him because she lives hand to mouth, picks up a job when she needs money, and in no way seems hindered or concerned about the highly provisional nature of her existence. She is free, whereas Paul ...was to all intents and purposes a free man, but a man for whom freedom was not entirely comfortable. But then he grasps the essence of his problem and, on a chance trip to France to check on Sarah's house, breaks free of a life of tedium. He finds himself in Paris where he catches ...a bus, not knowing or caring where it takes him before long realizing that that life of making do, of making the best of a comfortable but uncomforting existence, could no longer be sustained. In the final pages he finds his freedom and embraces it. The novel recounts his quest to that end. 9781905490424 VARIATIONS ON A THEME (or THE COOKIE CUTTER NOVELS)

To say that I was surprised by this novel would be an understatement. Reading (i.e. listening to) it has been a grim experience, perhaps the longest six hours of my life!

Having read and enjoyed some of Anita Brookner’s early work a number of years ago and being aware of her reputation as a writer, I was excited about returning to this author. I was not prepared for the dismal, gloomy, almost hopeless ambience of this particular story. I could not reconcile this experience either with my memory of other books by her or with her reputation as a writer.

As is my wont when my own experience of an author’s work deviates from that of the critics and the reading public, I turned to the internet for information. With 24 novels to her credit, an ample supply of reviews is available. Personal interviews, however, are less plentiful. Perhaps the most interesting piece that I have read is Anita Brookner, the final interview, an account of one of her rare interviews. This chat with journalist Mick Brown was conducted in 2009 upon the publication of Strangers and reprinted in The Telegraph on the date of Brookner’s death (March 15, 2016).

I found this glimpse into the physically austere personal world of Brookner, in her own element, to be most informative and perhaps more entertaining than the novel. For me, it validates two of the impressions that I formed while reading Strangers. First, that the story really is Anita Brookner’s own story: Paul Sturgis and Sarah Crawford — and yes, even the flighty, flippant Vicky Gardner — most certainly all represent the person that Brookner was, or would have liked to have been. Second, that the story is meant, on some level, to be amusing, even as Brookner herself responds to serious questions with tongue in cheek and a twinkle in her eye.

It is not necessary for me to provide a précis of the plot or a description of the characters — you can glean this information for yourself. Neither am I qualified to offer a literary critique. I can only reflect on my personal response to the story. Suffice it to say that, as a result of my foray into the imprint that Anita Brookner has left on the world-wide web, I have come to the conclusion that (as confessed by Mark Lawson in his 2009 review, to be found here) when I read those Brookner novels so many years ago, I was simply “too young to get it”.

I confess that I am rapidly approaching the age when the issues with which Brookner’s characters typically grapple are top-of-mind for me also. This little exercise has helped me to acquire a new respect for an author who has been criticized for writing the same story over and over again — the story being her own. I applaud Brookner’s perseverance in her dogged pursuit of self-understanding and her tenacity in repeating the story (and all its variations) of her inner life. It is never easy to reveal one’s doubts, foibles, and vulnerabilities in a public way. Kudos to Anita Brookner! I look forward to exploring her other novels. It may be that I am finally old enough to get it!

NOTE: After having had the time to research and ruminate, I am changing my rating from three starts to four stars. 9781905490424

Literary master Anita Brookner’s elegant style is manifest on every page of her brilliant new novel. Beautifully crafted and emotionally evocative, Strangers portrays the magic and depth of real life, telling the rich story of an ordinary man whose unexpected longings, doubts, and fears are universal.

Paul Sturgis is resigned to his bachelorhood and the quietude of his London flat. He occasionally pays obliging visits to his nearest living relative, Helena, his cousin’s widow and a doyenne of decorum who, like Paul, bears a tacit loneliness.

To avoid the impolite complications of turning down Helena’s Christmas invitation, Paul sets off for a holiday in Venice, where he meets Mrs. Vicky Gardner. Younger than Paul by several decades, the intriguing and lovely woman is in the midst of a divorce and at a crossroads in her life. Upon his return to England, a former girlfriend, Sarah, reenters Paul’s life. These two women reroute Paul’s introspections and spark a transformation within him.

Paul’s steady and preferred isolation now conflicts with the stark realization of his aloneness and his need for companionship in even the smallest degree. This awareness brings with it a torrent of feelings–reassessing his Venetian journey, desiring change, and fearing death. Ultimately, his discoveries about himself will lead Paul to make a shocking decision about his life. Strangers

Summary ê eBook, ePUB or Kindle PDF ☆ Anita Brookner