And while her vision deepens, it is not merely the kind of growth we expect from a writer acquiring maturity but rather the depth that comes from the ability of a master artist to keep discovering new patterns and nuances in the same picture.īrookner's novels deal with questions that have perplexed and fascinated novelists from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront'e to George Eliot and Henry James: the shifting balance between appearance and reality, the conflict between desire and restraint, the corruption of innocence - as well as its triumphant persistence. With each new effort, the sheer beauty of her prose grows more transparent, while the complexity of her vision deepens, her distinctive, spellbinding voice - elegant but passionate, funny but oddly earnest - remains a constant, yet reveals fresh inflections with each new book: the voice of a storyteller who also manages to consider and reflect as she tells. Brookner's novels (she has written four so far) are that indeed. Like the sensitive, cautious, stubbornly romantic heroines of Anita Brookner's novels, I have been saving my enthusiasm for the genuine article.

Recommending novels can put the reviewer in the position of the boy who cried wolf.

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