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Product Description
With this novel, Booker Prize-winning author Anita Brookner confirms her reputation as an unparalleled observer of social nuance and deeply felt longings. Brief Lives chronicles an unlikely friendship: that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia's excesses. Thrust together by their husbands' business partnership -- and by a guilty secret -- Julia and Fay develop an intense bond that is nonetheless something less than intimacy, a relationship in which we see our own uneasy compromises, not only with other people, but with life itself.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There are similar elements in this novel to Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. Not the plot, not at all, for Atwood's is much more compelling, but in the characterisation.
In both novels, the central character is a woman of the 1930s generation, grown old and reflecting on her life, but Brookner focusses entirely on the minutiae of daily life to show the wasted lives of women. Fay Langdon is a lower middle-class woman of very little ambition and no initiative whatsoever. Her horizons are bounded entirely by having a man in her life, to define her. She doesn't even like them very much, and they all seem to be a disappointment in one way or another. Her husband may have been fleecing his firm, and when she has an affair with her friend's husband, he keeps telling her about his affection for his wife. Her last attempt is with Dr Carter, an utterly selfish man who fancies himself as an eligible male and uses women for companionship and sex, as long as they make no demands. None of these men offer any emotional support or genuine affection.
And then there's Julie, a truly horrible woman, who exerts a bizarre magnetism. She makes a career of ordering her hapless friends about, insulting them as intellectual and social inferiors, while manipulating them into meeting her needs with a convincing display of helplessness about everyday things.
All this is very interesting, and beautifully written with wry insight from Fay, the narrator, but I tired of it in the last few pages and felt like giving Fay a good *shake*! She was just like Iris in The Blind Assassin, letting her life go to waste out of sheer inertia and an over-dependence on men.
In both novels, the central character is a woman of the 1930s generation, grown old and reflecting on her life, but Brookner focusses entirely on the minutiae of daily life to show the wasted lives of women. Fay Langdon is a lower middle-class woman of very little ambition and no initiative whatsoever. Her horizons are bounded entirely by having a man in her life, to define her. She doesn't even like them very much, and they all seem to be a disappointment in one way or another. Her husband may have been fleecing his firm, and when she has an affair with her friend's husband, he keeps telling her about his affection for his wife. Her last attempt is with Dr Carter, an utterly selfish man who fancies himself as an eligible male and uses women for companionship and sex, as long as they make no demands. None of these men offer any emotional support or genuine affection.
And then there's Julie, a truly horrible woman, who exerts a bizarre magnetism. She makes a career of ordering her hapless friends about, insulting them as intellectual and social inferiors, while manipulating them into meeting her needs with a convincing display of helplessness about everyday things.
All this is very interesting, and beautifully written with wry insight from Fay, the narrator, but I tired of it in the last few pages and felt like giving Fay a good *shake*! She was just like Iris in The Blind Assassin, letting her life go to waste out of sheer inertia and an over-dependence on men.
Format:Paperback
It's said that one grows into Brookner as one matures... Understanding the subtleties of her writing is key. This is one of the best books - possibly the best book - I have ever read on women growing older, the nature of friendships, loneliness and the 'problem of men'. If you want escapist fiction, read someone else. This is - and I speak from experience - just how it is: messy, painful, confusing, but at the same time a journey of acceptance to what is and the gradual accumulation of wisdom. I find Brookner to be immensely comforting for 'telling it how it is', no stone left unturned. Unlike the previous reviewer, I didn't feel I wanted to shake Fay; I empathised with her position and found her quietly courageous in how she coped with it. Fabulous, fabulous book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4 reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A sad tale of an unfulfilled life
6 Nov 1999
Format:Paperback
I was warned before I started on "Brief Lives" that in Anita Brookner's novels, nothing much ever happens. I guess I was prepared for the brooding pleasure that one might expect to derive from reading a sad contemplative piece but the experience totally surpassed my expectations. Brookner's facility with words is simply masterful. Her writing is precise, unpretentious, honest and true. Her characters are vividly drawn and always memorable. Contrary to the blurb, this novel is not about a friendship between two women. It is a tale of a thwarted and unfulfilled life, that of Fay's. Her relationship with the monstrous Julia cannot be considered a friendship by any imagination. With friends like Julia, who needs enemies ? Fay is bound to Julia only by a sense of obligation born of low self esteem and guilt pangs stemming from a midlife affair with Charlie. Julia, on the other hand, is a totally self-centred and imperious caricature of the former movie star she was and treats everybody including her husband, her household staff and her "friends" like Fay exactly the same way. There is no evidence of any valid basis for friendship between the two women, not that I can discern anyway. As seen through the eyes of Fay, the three men in Fay's life (Owen, Charlie and Alex) are all vapid and colourless characters deserving of the fate that awaits them - two of them get bumped off unexpectedly. The recurring question in the reader's mind is whether all men in Fay's world are as inherently remote emotionally as they seem or are they simply reacting to Fay's insecurity and inability to articulate her own needs. She is among the last of that dying breed of women from the old world who depend on their menfolk for self definition. She realises in time (but more from fortituous events than from the dawn of self enlightenment) the futility of this condition. As the men drop off like flies, she recoups a measure of resolve and dignity from within herself to lead the rest of her twilight years in a state of modest independence. Even the bullying Julia gets packed off to Spain. So the story ends on a note of hope as Fay contemplates a solitary life but this time without the people who have unconsciously conspired to make her feel undervalued. Brookner has produced a near masterpiece in this introspective study of a woman's life. Unless you're allergic to this genre of novels, I would highly recommend "Brief Lives" to all lovers of literature. It is truly a beautifully crafted piece of work.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
A Cautionary Tale
4 Jan 2000
Format:Paperback
The author's name need not be displayed on the cover of this novel, so much in evidence are the standard Brooknerian themes and features: the professional invalid, whom one suspects of being desperately in need of wide open windows and a good brisk walk; the eternal cups of tea, ever being brewed in cozy kitchens as substitutes for life; the divining eye of the narrator, which eerily registers the thoughts and desires of characters without often resorting to illustrative dialogue and action. It would be difficult to like many of the characters in this novel; they are far too autistic for friendship, far too myopically bent on crashing their luxury liner selves into the shimmering icebergs of life. But in Fay Langdon we have a particularly puzzling person. On Hallowe'en she would have to go out dressed as a gigantic question mark, for her whole existence poses a problem: what happens to people who choose dedication to mediocrity instead of actively pursuing things that really matter to them? Fay spends all her years waiting for someone to come along and make her happy, and the idea never seems to occur to her that she might actually come up with meaningful activities and goals of her own. In addition to being an especially enjoyable way to pass some time, this book is also a provocative and cautionary tale. Its message? The person who settles for kissing frogs may turn into one herself, and never find that prince.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
an exploration of compromise
7 July 1999
Format:Paperback
I am a long time fan of Ms. Brookner's books. Brief Lives is a fine step in her exploration of the way people get along with one another. Her heroines are often lonely and cerebral yet never weak. I suggest this book to anyone who wants more than the danielle steele fare so prevalent these days.
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