A Friend from England

This is the second book I've read by [[Anita Brookner]] and I've loved them both. Brookner is fantastic at writing a character's inner life. This book is about Rachel, a single, independent, working, woman who takes up with the Livingstone family. Oscar and Dorrie are an older couple and their grown daughter, Heather, is sort of matched up with Rachel as a friend, though neither seems to care about the other much at all. When Heather gets married, Rachel becomes more and more critical of Heather's choices and adamant about Heather's duties as a daughter. Rachel's criticisms of Heather reveal more and more about her own personality and desires as this first person narrative unfolds.

I really loved the writing, the subtlety, and the show more insight present in this novel. I will pick up any Brookner novel I see from now on. show less

Anita Brookner writes short, intense novels about the interior life of solitary women (for the most part). This one is quite good. Here, the woman is Rachel, who narrates her relationship with the Livingstone family - casual at first, but then deepening into something far too intimate. Oscar Livingstone was the accountant of Rachel's deceased father, and she has inherited him, professionally. He comes into sudden wealth, retires, and for obscure reasons, decides to befriend Rachel. She becomes a regular visitor to Oscar and Dorrie's small house in Wimbledon, and there meets Heather, their twenty-something daughter. She is the center of Livingstone world, and Rachel is given the role of mentor or older sister to Heather. Or is she? show more Rachel is the consummate unreliable narrator. Everything Rachel tells us about Heather makes her seem like a shallow spoiled brat, with nothing interesting to say and completely unappealing. Is she merely tolerating Heather or sincerely "helping" her on behalf of Oscar and Dorrie? Or is she simply protecting herself from hurt since it's clear that Heather doesn't much like her, and her cosseted existence may be seen as a rebuke. Rachel is single, independent, and obviously unhappy (to the point of depression) although she is continually claiming that she is *just fine*. Brookner is successful at building tension steadily throughout the novel as Heather moves outside her family circle for a life centered on a husband. She doesn't quite get it right, at first, but she gamely wants to try again. When Dorrie falls ill, Rachel decides she must intervene to keep Heather at home to care for her parents. Everything does come to a head (actually more than once) and emotional truths are laid bare. Or maybe not. The bleak conclusion was inevitable from the first page. show less

Anita Brookner is somebody I feel like, if I met her, we would instantly feel comfortable with each other. The way she describes humans, and their social manipulations, reminds me of the way that I look at people.
In this story, rachel, the protagonist, is friends with an older couple who has a spoiled daughter, close to Rachel's age. Having everything provided for her has made her complacent, and self-satisfied. Heather, for that is her name, chooses a silly boy for her husband to be, and then seems annoyed when he turns out not to be husband material.

Hardback 1st American Edition 1987
P. 75:
"He was one of those men [the father of the groom] who think they are good at getting women to change their minds, but I had no trouble in dealing show more with this period men of his age like to think they are masterful, whereas they're cheap attraction, did they but know it, is that they only have power over material necessities. do people of my generation they appear quite toothless. I had no doubt that in the ballrooms of his youth the colonel had been noted for his charm and his way with women period it was a style which he had carefully taught his son, who had never come as far as I could remember uttered a serious word. Bad and age was obviously the favored means of exchange in the Sandberg establishment. Part of me could not bear to watch the ruined child I took Michael to be, or to imagine the efforts he would have to make to live without his father's supervision. Heather I thought the more down to earth of the two, but in her way equally enigmatic."

P.104-5:
"I had further assumed that she had chosen this partner precisely because with him she could not be changed into anything else and through him she would not be made vulnerable. I had even, remembering her shrewdness, thought it was a clever arrangement, a dispensation for her to enjoy the uninterrupted privacy of her own mind. although it was an arrangement which I thought Ludicrous I could see in it evidence of advanced thinking. but now it seemed as if the system had broken down, although I did not see why it should, if that was what she had wanted. she probably had not reckoned on his being there all the time. with that I felt my old impatience with her rising to the surface. Some women avoid love – I do myself – because they fear it's treachery. but such women, myself included, have to be pretty sure they understand their decision to do so. heather, I could see, was quite simply unequal to the task of thinking the matter through."

When the marriage with Michael doesn't work out, Heather moves on to her next quick marriage. The brother of a colleague of hers fits the bill.
P.148:
"I must confess to feeling furious with her. in addition to the sheer inconvenience of it all, I felt that Heather had usurped my independence and was in effect using my time to enjoy the equivalent of my habitual adventures. and, I thought, once she realized that such adventures were preferable to more complex and burdensome attachments, who knew what path she might not follow? But over and above my fury I felt a pang of pity for this slow-moving girl, with her prudish good manners, and her Awakening in the arms of knowing italian, the word passed round behind her unsuspecting back. Gradually she would assume a puzzled and preoccupied air, although her inward thoughts would take on a darker coloring. what happens to women is that they never entirely lose the faith that it will all come out right in the end, that the next man, or the next, will be the answer to their original expectations of stability and order, will resolve the difficult equation of innocence and experience. She was not made for my sort of life. She did not have the mental equipment, the reserves of temperament, the cynicism, The taste for danger." show less

Wonderfully written!

Wonderfully written!